Fallout: Equestria - Chain Breaker

by BurningLeaf

Chapter 1: Botched Operation

I don’t really know how I managed to get myself into a situation as stupid as this. Somehow I managed to screw up and had to literally levitate myself to the ceiling and use a stealth-buck to hide 3 feet above the meeting between the leader of a travelling group of slave traders, and the sort of leader of the faction of griffon mercenaries who owned this building. The griffon was in the middle of trying to convince the dark green stallion to pay them double for an escort to their next major sale, one that I myself had set up. It wasn't actually a slave trade, but rather several turrets that had been rigged to open fire on them whilst I attempt to free the slave without being caught, killed and turned into the practice dummy on their shooting range.

Well, that was supposed to be what was going to happen, but I had known Cross Wings for a quite some time and I was smart enough to realize that, as long as the caps were both genuine and plentiful, he’d shoot his own father in the back. In fact, I had my suspicions that he actually did.

I was in a decently sized office with nothing very interesting in it. A simple desk with a terminal that I was sure Cross Wings had no idea how to use, and a swivel chair that the scruffy, black and light grey griffon with a sheriffs hat was sat in as he fed the slaver some crap about how showing up with them would somehow intimidate the buyer into paying them a bit extra. There was a medium-sized window right behind that, a couple of filing cabinets against the wall to the right of the door, and a safe in the corner of the room that was open and had nothing in it, which pissed me off because that pretty much defeats the whole purpose of a safe.

I shook my head as I reminded myself of my sister's lecture about how not everyone else thinks the same way as me, that I shouldn’t dislike them for it and...

‘Wait, why the fuck is this more important than getting out of here?’ I yelled internally, making a mental note to hit myself later for going off on such a stupid tangent, on top of the five I was already going to give myself for this entire Celestia damned plan.

I turned my attention back to trying to figuring out how I was going to deal with this situation without getting both myself and all the griffons thoroughly murdered. I had no real options for what I could do next that wouldn’t result in a big shootout once my stealth-buck ran dry.

If I dropped down onto the desk and started shooting then the others outside the door would hear and come running. If I tried sneaking out then I would have to figure out how to either be subtle about opening and slipping out of a door that was barely four inches behind the pony I was trying to avoid being seen by, or open the window and somehow prevent the harsh wind outside from doing anything to alert them.

And if I just held myself to the ceiling and waited until they had both left the room I would have maybe two seconds after the stealth-buck died before I either hear the slaver leader shout out ‘Who the fuck is this guy on the ceiling?’ or have the oh-so-delightful pleasure of Cross Wings saying something sarcastic like ‘Wow, not even Vanish Strike himself has any faith in his own plan.’

I only had my .44 magnum revolver with me because it was the only thing that I had any way of concealing. When I realized that I didn’t want to be left out of this conversation I didn't have any choice but to leave my other weapons in the room that I had been told to sit and wait in. I only got this much in by hiding it under the brown duster coat that disguised the beige combat armour covering my dark bluish grey body. Any shots fired would result in every slaver in the building rushing to make our acquaintance, and then introduce us to all their friendly guns.

Obviously, my original plan wasn’t to float myself directly above the conversation, but it had somehow evolved into that. What I was going to do was get to the office before the other two, plant a sound transmitting spell in a draw, sneak back out, and listen to them from the safety the nearest unoccupied room. After that, depending on what I heard, ether dash back to were Cross Wings had told me to stay and act as if nothing had happened, or hide in a locker, wait for him to walk past, jump out, wrap my forelegs around his throat and squeeze until he stopped moving.

Fortunately, it didn’t seem as if that would be necessary, as he was demanding to be paid a very large amount upfront, which meant that he did intend to help me, but he was still going to get this guys money. Cross Wings may have been a shady bastard, but he at least respected his own craft and wouldn't ask for more than he was worth (surprisingly).

The small device attached to my left foreleg that was currently keeping me hidden told me that there was only ten percent charge left.

‘Shit. I need to do something fast.’ I thought in a slight panic. ‘I could drop down on top of the slaver and hope that I’d crushed him to death. No, that wouldn’t work, I’m not heavy enough for that, and Cross Wings really doesn’t like surprises, so he'd probably cry out.’

Eight percent. ‘I don't have a good angle on them, so I doubt that I can hit both of them with stun spells. Urgh, even if I did, I don't have enough energy left in me to actually knock them both out cold.’

Six percent. ‘I could try that sleep spell that I saw that kidnapper back in Nova use. No, I only saw him use it once and I hadn’t let him live long enough to explain it to me.’

Five percent. And then I realized something that could work, something so simple and obvious that I added this the list of things stupid moments that I had to hit myself for.

‘Even if I can’t shot my pistol, it's still a big hunk of steel and getting hit in the head really hard with it would probably kill a pony.’

Four percent. ‘Levitating myself has taken a lot out of me, I might not even have the strength to swing the gun hard enough.’

Three percent. ‘Even if I could knock him out, I still need to keep Cross Wings quiet.’

Two percent. ‘Ah fuck it.’

I quickly pulled the revolver out of its holster underneath my coat and flouted it down right behind the slaver head, whilst he was making a pathetic attempt to haggle with Cross Wings, who saw the gun that was enveloped in a pale purple glow, hovering right behind the slaver. His eyes widened, but thankfully he figured out what was happening pretty quickly and didn’t draw attention to it.

I swung the large pistol with everything I had left in me and smashed it into the spinal columns leading into his skull, hoping that, if I couldn’t kill him, I could at least knock him out. However, it seemed that fortune favours the one with trust issues that force him to do very stupid things, as he went sprawling to the ground with blood erupting from the back of his head as his skull caved in on itself. Didn't even have time to scream.

“Well shit, I didn’t know I could do that,” I said aloud as I released my telekinetic grip on myself and let gravity take me back down to the floor. Cross Wings huffed.

“Eh, I’m not impressed.” He snorted in his usual gruff, yet slightly juvenile voice, just with that snarky undertone that never fails to make me want to buck him in the face. If he had any idea how difficult self-levitation was than he probably would be, but I really didn’t want to get into this argument with him right now. I flicked my dark purple and blue mane out of my eyes with a hoof and groaned loudly whilst turning to look away from him, not wanting to make eye contact.

“Alright, go ahead,” I stated flatly, just wanting to get this over with.

“Go ahead with what?” I hadn’t been expecting a response like that and look at him with a confused expression that almost matched his own.

“You know, yell at me about how I fuck everything up, smack me around a bit, point out every little thing I’ve ever done wrong to the point where I want to kill myself,” I said this as if he was already supposed to know all this. He just looked more confused and a bit disturbed.

“What kind of assholes did you hang around with before me?” He asked. I couldn’t tell if there was any concern in his voice or if he was looking for inspiration, so I just gave a simple responded.

“You don’t want to know.” He continued to stare for a few seconds, then chuckled. “Yeah, you’re right, I don’t.” I rolled my eyes and looked over at the corpse, deciding that if anyone in his crew were to have a key to the slave cages it would be him. I slid my .44 back into its holster on my right rear leg, lifted my duster coat over to hide it, before trotting over to his body and rooting around in the pockets of his pitifully weak barding.

After a minute or two of rummaging, I found the key I was looking, along with a switchblade that looked so old and worn out that I could probably break it but calling it a rude name, the fake order forever slave that they had that I’d sent them, a small sack which I estimated to have around a hundred fifty caps in it, which I tossed over to Cross Wings in the hopes that it would mean that I wouldn’t need to give him an actual apology, and a different, smaller key that I assumed opened a safe somewhere in one of the wagons that they had travelled here in.

From one of my coat pockets, I pulled a keyring with about a half dozen keys on it and added the two new ones, whilst discarding the switchblade, then remembered that I still had the empty stealth-buck strapped to my leg. I took it off and, having no more use for the small gadget, deposited it into one of the slavers pockets, wasn’t like he could object.

“Okay, that’s enough awkward silence. What the fuck was that?” Cross Wings demanded. ‘Ah damn it. What’s wrong with awkward silence?’

“I was making sure that I didn’t get screwed over,” I said dryly, still not looking at him.

“Bullshit. We’ve known each other for what, four, five years now? Why would I stab you in the back?” He snapped as he walked up to me and stood to my left, more frustrated than actually angry.

“I don’t know, money? Isn’t that way you do anything?” That remark earned me a sharp punch to the side. I took a step back, clutching my left ribs with my right foreleg. My armour had absorbed the damage, but I hadn't been expecting it.

“Why don’t you trust me?” He was almost yelling at this point, his amber eyes glaring with genuine anger. I let out a sigh, a bit disappointed in myself for what I was about to say.

“Can’t this conversation wait until we deal with the rest the rest of the slavers?” I said, trying to get this whole plan back on track.

“No. No, it can’t, Vanish. I may be a money hungry prick, but I’m not a complete scum bag, and you know that. I know you have this weird thing where you can’t trust anyone, but we’re friends. So why in hell would you think that I’d do something like?” I’m a bit ashamed to admit that the first thing that went through my head upon hearing this was ‘Since when were we friends?’

I sighed in defeat. I had known for a while now that eventually I was going to have to tell him about why I had trust issues, but I wasn’t planning to do it under these kinds of conditions.

“When I was just a colt, I believed in the whole ‘strength in numbers, power of friendship’ thing, and it always ended in us getting screwed over. Eventually, me and a few others got into a situation similar to this one, but the guy who was doing what you’re doing now did sell us out for the caps. I assume the worst in ponies because I’ve seen the worst in ponies, I don’t trust them because they don’t give me a reason to, and I do shit like this because I’ve been through too much to just let my life repeat itself.”

Cross Wings stared at me with his beak slightly ajar, and then a looked puzzled.

“Us?” I froze in place. ‘How many times was I going to slip up and fuck myself over today?’ I sighed again and looked away. This was something I really didn’t want to remember, let alone talk about.

“You and I both know that I don't talk about this kind of thing for a reason, so just drop it.” Yeah, I sounded like a bit of a dick, but it was better than actually talking to him about it. Cross Wings was silent for a few more agonizingly long seconds. If I was lucky he’d figure it out on his own and I wouldn’t have to elaborate.

“…So, should I tell all the slaver that we worked something out and that they should go wait outside?” ‘Oh thank Celestia. We were going to deal with the slavers now, and my personal history, hopefully, never.’

“If we do that, we’re gonna have to give them all their weapons back, if we don’t, they’ll get suspicious and I can guarantee you that at least half of them snuck stuff in. Probably not very impressive stuff, but still, we can’t be too careful.” I responded as if the previous conversion had never happened. Cross Wings groaned “Why do ponies never trust us?”

“Would you trust us?” I responded in an emotionless tone. He let out a soft laugh.

“No, not for a second.”

“Well, there’s your answer.” He smirked, and shook his head, trying to come up with an idea that wouldn't end in us getting shot.

BANG.

The loud crack of a gun firing filled the air. Both our heads instantly snapped to face the door, but we didn’t move from where we were standing. Then a second shot and a third and a scream of pain and fear rang out from behind the door. I levitated out my .44 and dashed over and pressed myself to the wall to the right of the door, gripped the doorknob with my magic and looked back to Cross Wings, who was at his desk, looking through the draws. He quickly found what he was looking for and pulled it out. A 12.7mm pistol.

It was made to be used by griffons, so rather than the traditional mouth grip that my gun had, it had a handle so that he could hold it with his claws and had the appearance of a stranded militaristic pistol with all the edges were rounded off.

He jumped over the desk and leaned against the wall on the other side of the door and nodded to me. I telekinetically twisted the doorknob and flung it open. In an instant, Cross Wings was gone. I looked down both ends of the hall, but he was nowhere to be seen.

To the left, there were two dead ponies, a mare, and a stallion. To the right were another dead pony and a very much alive griffon who had been shot through her right foreleg. I recognized her as one of the mercs that Cross Wings had told to keep an eye out for any slavers trying to course trouble. She looked at me, gave a weak smile and pointed a claw at the dead ponies.

“That mare was the second in command. She was getting pissed about how long they were taking and wanted to get in on the talk. When I told her no she got a bit ahead of herself. Don’t worry ‘bout me, jab of med-x and I’ll be fine.” She said in a surprisingly calm voice. I didn’t believe that she was fine, but these talons mercs were built tough, so I highly doubted that she would die.

“Do they have any way of getting to their weapons?” I asked with a sense of urgency.

“Well, Cross Wings still has the key, but I did see one mare who looked pretty tweaked. It could have been Mint-als so she might be able to crack the lock.”

‘Fuck.’ I needed to get to the closet where they had locked all the guns before she did.

I turned and ran down the hall, hopping over the two bodies and continuing down the hall, darting around corners trying to find my way to the weapons closet, until I took a right and skidded to a stop.

Three slavers dead ahead, all wearing similar barding to their boss, two earth ponies stallions, one a dark yellow with a brown mane and tail with a pair of hoof cuffs for a cutie mark. The other a deep red without a mane. I couldn’t tell if his cutie mark was bloodstain or if that was a wound.

The last was a soft blue unicorn mare with a wispy, darker blue mane and tail, with a few silver streaks. She was the odd one out since she had an image of a cocktail drink on her flank. This meant that, before she was a slave driver, she had either been a bartender, or a drunk.

The other major tip-off that she wasn't as crazy as the other two was her eyes. Deep blue and lacking the same deranged twitch that all the mad ponies seemed to have.

Only two of them had guns, the yellow earth ponies with a pistol hanging from around his neck on a chain and the unicorn had a small sub-machine flouting in front of her muzzle. The last one had surprisingly large knife gripped in his teeth. They all looked at me, but for some reason, they didn’t immediately start shooting.

“Are there any griffon chasing you?” Asked the unicorn mare with a cautious tone. It took me a second to figure out just what she was asking, but when I finally did I was rather taken aback.

‘Do...do they think I’m on their side just because I’m not a griffon?’ I quickly recovered from my mild shock.

“Er, no, it’s just me.” I was gonna have to play along for now. If I was lucky I could use these idiots to find to Mint-als mare and put her down before the slavers could get their stuff back.

“Okay, come on. We need to find Caramel, fast.” She said, with a sense of worry in her voice.

“Oh, you’re shitting me. We’re not going back to find that drugged up kid. We need to get all our guns back and blow these griffon fuckers away.” Yelled the stallion with the pistol.

‘She's just a child? Well, that changes things.’ I was going to have to try and keep her away from the other slavers until the end of the confrontation. True, I wasn’t above killing somepony young, but only under certain circumstance, like if one's aiming a gun at me... or running at me with a clever.

The unicorn looked at him with an icy glare.

“That kid is our best chance at getting through that door, the Mint-als help her to concentrate on stuff like this.” She snapped back. The earth pony looked as if he was trying to hide his fear as he attempted to stand his ground (but was failing).

“Well, can’t we just smash the door in?” He questioned.

“Because we don’t have any way of doing that without giving half our guys concussions.” The stallion opened his mouth to continue his protest but closed it upon realizing he didn’t really have any argument.

“Alright, so where do we find her?” The unicorn's expression softened slightly.

“Last place I saw her was in that waiting room that the griffon in the cowpony hat told us to wait. There were some griffons in there with the rest, so all we can do is hope that more of them died than us.”

‘Yeah right, have you ever fought a griffon? They react so quickly that it’s like shooting at something that already knows everything that you’re going to do.’

“Alright, let’s head back there and look around,” I stated, attempting to act in a manner that wouldn't arouse suspicion. Thankfully I’m a better actor than I give myself credit for because the others all nodded and ran off down the hall. I let out a sigh of relief before following.

---

We galloped down the halls, darting around corners, trying to make our way back to the waiting room. I could only thank Celestia that we didn’t run into any griffons on the way... well, no alive one. I counted three dead griffons and eleven dead slaver ponies. If I remembered correctly there were roughly between thirty to thirty-five slavers in the whole caravan and so far I had seen fourteen corpses, so, as far as I could tell, we were almost halfway done.

I wasn’t worried about running out of griffons to back me up. There may have only been a bit under than twenty, but the Talons had rather high standards for its mercs, and since they had Cross Wings looking out for them I didn’t think I'd have anything to worry about. Even if they also had to give up their weapons to make things even to try and calm the slavers down after they threw a fit upon hearing the rules about guests, they were still a tough bunch.

The unicorn ran to a door and pulled it open with her magic. We all dashed into a large room with several chairs, couches and corpse, two ponies and one griffon, all scattered about.

“Caramel. Are you here? Caramel.” She called out, frantically looking in every direction, trying to spot this ‘Caramel ’ pony.

“I-I’m here.” Came a soft, timid voice from the other side of the room. We all looked over to see that it came from a upturned couch with one end held up slightly by the seat of a desk chair. A small, golden brown coloured earth pony mare with a puffy, slightly curly, cream coloured mane slowly poked her head out from under the couch.

“Is it safe to come out?” She asked, clearly very scared. Her face held a look of weariness, depression, and fright, and her pinkish red eyes had bag underneath them.

I knew this face. It was the face of the low after a good high. She was undoubtedly the Mint-als mare.

The baby blue unicorn dashed over and crouched down next to her.

“It’s all going to be alright, but we need your help. The griffons locked up all our guns and we need you to pick the lock so that we can get them and finish them all off.” The young mare crawled out from under the couch. She wasn’t a filly but she wasn’t near old enough to be called a teenager. I’d say she was roughly eleven years old. Her cutie mark was a red decorative ribbon tied into a bow, meaning that she likely also hadn’t started life with the same fate as all the other slaver. My guess was that she only joined up with them to help pay for her addiction.

“B-but I don’t have any Mint-als left. I can’t unlock anything without them.” The older mare’s eyes went wide as the colour drained from her face. They couldn’t get through the door. Perfect.

“Then let’s just get out of here. Screw the slaves and screw the buyers.” I stated. If I was lucky I could convince them to ditch the slaver career and maybe I wouldn’t have to kill all of them. The unicorn seemed to snap out of her stupor and looked at me. She stared for a few seconds before a look of determination appeared on her face.

“Yeah, you’re right. This isn’t worth it.” She turned back to the younger pony. “Come on Caramel, maybe we can find a town that needs some extra ponies.” I don’t think she really believed what she was saying, but I understood why she said it.

She wanted to reassure the kid, give her some form of hope. I, myself, had been the recipient of such lies before and couldn’t really say that they worked, but the young mare's look of fear quickly disappeared and was replaced with a rather weak smile.

This lie had worked.

“The hell you’re leaving, you still have a debt to pay.” The pistol stallion barked angrily. The child let out a startled squeak and hid behind to older mare. The blue unicorn stared at the stallion with narrow eyes and a hardened face.

“What are you talking about? The last job pays back the what was left, this one's just for insurance.” She stated, more confused and pissed off than nervous.

“The last of what you owe, yeah. But she still has to pay for all those Mint-als.” He snarled, a devilish smirk spreading across his face. The blue unicorn's eyes widened. She turned and looked down to the child cowering behind her.

“You... You told me you took them from the slaves.” She said in a quivering voice.

“I did, I did, I swear.” She was panicking.

“Yeah, but no one ever said that you didn’t have to pay for them. Isn’t that right, Carve?” The so far mute pony with the knife nodded in agreeance. These guys were trying to make them stay, presumably so they could be used as meat shields.

I’d heard enough to know that these guys weren’t going to be reasonable.

I backed up a few paces whilst they were still trying to blackmail and threaten the two mares. Thankfully they didn’t notice.

My pistol was more than enough to deal with them both with no problem, but the ammo for this thing wasn’t exactly common, and these two weren’t worth the waste. I saw that the yellow slaver still had the pistol hanging from around his neck and an idea struck me.

I telekinetically grasped both it and the chain it was attached to and tightened it whilst pulling the gun up so that it was pressed to the side of the knife ponies head.

BANG

The red ponies fell down with a stream of blood trailing behind him. The yellow one started to go pale. He retched a few times as I chocked the life out of him until his body went limp, his head still held up by the chain that I gripped in my magic. I released it and he fell to the ground with a loud thud. That was eighteen slavers dead.

I looked over to the two mares, the older one was staring at the bodies with a shocked expression, the younger one was completely terrified, shaking and trying to hide underneath the others tail.

The blue unicorn quickly shook off her shock and levitated her sub-machine to point at me. I grabbed the gun with my own magic and gave it a hard tug to the side, pointing the barrel at the wall. She hadn’t been prepared for that and lost her grip in the weapon. She glared at me in an attempt to look fearsome, but I could see the silent panic attack she was having. I could just take the gun and run off, leaving them to their own devices, but that would pretty much guarantee their deaths. I sighed.

“That shot probably alerted someone, and since seeing this will cause both sides to start shooting at us, we should get moving.” Her eyes widened.

“W-wait, you’re actually going to help us?”

“I know, I’m not happy about it either, but my conscience dictates it, so I guess I have to.” I deadpanned. She stared at me with her mouth ajar. Caramel slowly stuck her head out from behind the dumbstruck older mare.

“Are you going to hurt us?” ‘Celestia damned, am I really that scary?’ I rolled my eyes and looked down at her.

“If I wanted to hurt you, I wouldn’t have killed those two.” I pointed a hoof at the corpses.

The blue mare shook her head and gave me an uneasy look.

“Why should we trust you? You’re a slaver as well, and you’re a murderer.” My face hardened. Accusations like these had gotten a lot of ponies on my bad side.

“I'm not a slaver. I was planning to free the slaves. You know how? By leading you idiots right into a firing range and slaughter you all.” Once again, her eyes widened and face went pale. I took a step towards her. She tried to back away, but the younger pony behind her was completely petrified and prevented her from moving.

“And you know what?” I took another step.

“I wouldn’t consider that to be murder.” Another step.

“I would consider that to be a form of making this damned wasteland just a little bit better.” One more step. My muzzle was barely an inch from hers.

“Would you disagree?” I stared coldly into her eyes. She was quivering horribly, but still rooted to the spot.

I drew back and softened my expression. She hadn't taken her fear-filled eyes away from my own, causing me to sigh again.

“Even if you don’t trust me, you still have a better chance with me than with anyone else in this place. I’m not gonna tell you that I’m a good guy, but I’m your best chance.” I offered her a hoof. “Both you and her.” She stopped shivering and gazed at it.

Slowly she reached out and took it with her own. I pulled her to her hooves and looked down at the kid. She still hadn’t moved out the ball that she’d curled up into. I crouched down to her so we were both at the same eye level, trying and failing to make eye contact.

“Welcome to reality, kid. It’s cold, cruel and full of ponies that would probably take this opportunity to do something terrible to you both.” I realized that this kind of approach wasn’t going to work, so I was gonna have to change my tone.

“Er… But not me.” ‘Real smooth, dipshit.’ It seemed to be enough to get her to finally look at me and loosened up a bit, despite my lack of speechcraft. If I could keep this up, I was golden.

“You can’t get by in life if you don’t see the good in ponies. If you only ever look out for yourself you're going to go completely insane. If you don’t trust anyone then how can you trust yourself?” I felt like the biggest hypocrite in the wasteland, even if I was just giving her a ‘reassuring lie’.

“If you can tell right from wrong, and you can act on what you believe to be right than you can be trusted. You’ve seen what I see to be right, what do you think of it?” I held out a hoof, looking right into her eyes. She stared back at me and after a few seconds took it.

“Well, ain’t this heart-warming.” Came a snide voice from the door. I turned my head to look at Cross Wings standing the doorway, leaning against the frame. He had an assault carbine in his claws, his pistol in a holster on the left side of his chest, a sheathed machete on the right side and another gun that I couldn’t see properly slung over his back. Caramel let out a startled squeak and hid behind me whilst the blue unicorn tensed and readied herself to jump at him.

“Wait, wait. He’s fine.” I said quickly, waving around a forehoof. She relaxed her body a bit but didn’t get out of her pouncing position.

“Making friends, are we?” He asked in an especially dickish manner.

“Sort of,” I replied with a frown.

“Well, friend of yours, a friend of mine. Names Cross Wings.” He said in a surprisingly jaunty manner. The blue mare stood up straight, looking a bit confused.

“Blue Lagoon, and that’s Caramel Cream.” She said, trying to be as emotionless as possible.

“You're kidding me, Her name’s 'Caramel Cream'? Well didn’t she have creative parents.” Said Cross Wings, his voice practically dripping with sarcasm. I had to admit that her name being her colour scheme was rather silly. Blue Lagoon look a bit taken aback by this comment, then a look of realization appeared on her face. She turned to me.

“And you are?” ‘Oh yeah, I never told her my name.’

“Vanish Strike.” Cross Wings smirked in a way that I really didn’t like.

“Oh, don’t so modest, Mr Nightkin.” Both the mares gasped and looked at me. ‘Oh, thanks a fucking lot Cross Wings.’

“Y-you’re the Nightkin. The one that DJ PON3 talks about.” Asked Blue Lagoon. I groaned loudly and looked anywhere but at them.

“Yes.”

“The one who turns invisible and goes around freeing slaves, a-and killing raiders.” Asked Caramel in a timid yet excited way.

“Yes.”

“The one defended the town of Warm Spring from that gang of explosive nut jobs. What were they called, the Powder ponies?” Said Cross Wings in as condescending a tone as possible. I glared at him, making the silent promise to whack around the back of the head later.

“Yes”

“The one who-”

“Can this please wait until we’re not in a place full of angry slaver ponies that want to kill us?” I snapped. I really didn’t want to be reminded of all the crap I’d done that had earned me a segment on one of DJ PON3's radio news reports about all the happenings in the wasteland.

“Oh, alright. Here, catch.” Cross Wings took the gun on his back, a scoped .308 rifle, and tossed it to me, which I court in my magic.

‘Finally, a gun with a bit of range.’ I slung my rifle around my neck and looked back to Cross Wings as he tossed a sheathed combat knife to me. I caught it and brought it round to strap it to small clip on the armour covering my chest.

“The rest of the Talons should be able to get to their stuff pretty easily, so we’ll be able to clear this place out pretty quickly.” My blood went cold. I stared at him as told me that there was a Hellhound downstairs.

“Cross Wings. For the love of Celestia, Luna and whoever the hell else. Did you leave the door to the guns unlocked.” I already knew the answer, but maybe I could get very lucky for once and be wrong.

“Well, yeah.”

‘… Shit.’

I didn’t have the time to yell at him. I didn’t have the time to do anything. I just throw the sub-machine gun back to Blue Lagoon, turned for the door and run like mine and a lot of other lives depended on it… because they did.

I did have an idea where the gun closet was, but I didn’t exactly know the layout of the building, so I was just running around trying to see if I could recognize anything.

I heard gunfire ahead to the left. I sprinted towards the sound whilst levitating out my .44, stopped just before rounding the corner and slowly peered around. Three griffons, one dead, and five ponies, none with guns, but I saw a few knives and one or two batons. There was a 9mm pistol on the floor, but it was probably empty.

I raised my revolver and aimed at the back of the head of the biggest and therefore most intimidating pony and fired.

His head exploded into gore as his body fell down. The other ponies and even the griffons looked at me in shock. I aimed my pistol at the next slaver, who was still staring at me like an idiot and fired again, this time into his neck. As he went down everyone finally figured out whose side I was on and resumed their conflict. The slavers charged at me but were quickly set upon by the griffons.

One of the griffons rammed a knife into one of the slaver eyes, and the other slammed a baton into another’s head, which cracked open. The last one looked back at the two griffons and began to panic.

He turned back to me, presumably with the intention of running past me, and was met with the barrel of a revolver. One shot and that made twenty-three.

The two griffons look to me, one with his beak open to say something, but I didn’t stay to listen. I ran right past them and rounded the next corner to see a flight of stairs leading to the ground floor. I practically jumped down them and turned to continue down the hall but stopped abruptly.

Four ponies, more than fifteen meters ahead. Two with combat shotguns, one with a hunting rifle, and one with a large wooden bat. They had gotten to the gun closet first.

‘Ah, Celestia fuck you with a blazing spike bat.’

They hadn’t noticed me. I crouched down and levitated my rifle around to look through the scope. The one that intimidated me the most was the rifle pony, so I lined up the crosshairs on her head. She noticed me and yelled at the others right as I pulled the trigger. Twenty-four.

This action was, again, met with them staring in shock, but they recovered quicker than the others. I slid the bolt back, ejected the empty .308 shell, pushed it back into place and aimed.

One of the shotgun ponies took a shot but was still too far away to be able to properly hit me. I looked through the scope again and fired at the close of the two shotgun ponies, this time through his chest. He fell down in-between the other two ponies, who were running toward me at a full gallop.

I pulled the bolt again and prepared for the next shot, but they were to close for me to snipe them, so I did one of the few things I could do when ponies get too close.

The mare with the bat was nearer to me, but the stallion with the shotgun was more of a threat. I magically pushed the gun forward until the barrel jabbed him between the eyes and pulled the trigger, reducing his head to nothing more than a red blur. The slaver with the bat was completely unfazed by her allies death and continued charging at me.

I couldn’t aim at her properly, so I just levitated the gun up, twisted the gun in mid-air and without properly aiming, fired it down at her. The bullet barely grazed her, leaving a long red mark down her left side, which did nothing to slow her down as she closed the distance between us and swung her bat, striking me on the side. My armour prevented the bat itself from doing any damage, but there was still an immense amount of pain as if I had just been stabbed. It only took me a second to figure out way.

“What kind of cheap asshole only puts one nail in a bat?” I screamed out, more in anger than pain. Her bat was still lodged in my side, so she couldn’t really do anything, meaning that I had an opening.

I swung my hunting rifle and cracked her over the head with it as she attempted to yank her bat out of my ribs. She released the bat and stumbled a bit, trying to regain her sense of balance. I flipped the floating gun around to press the end of the barrel at her head and sent the last bullet into her skull. Twenty-seven.

I dropped the empty rifle and staggered into a wall to try and hold myself on my hooves. The nail was still embedded in my side, holding the bat up. At the very least this gave me something to grip onto.

I grasped the entire thing in my magic and braced myself. Clenching my teeth to point where I thought they might break, I yanked on the bat as hard as I could, ripping the damned thing out of me and sending it and red trail of my own blood flying about twenty feet down the hall. My coat was left with a small hole surrounded with a crimson stain that was growing larger by the second.

My entire torso felt like somepony had stabbed me with something much bigger and much more phallic. Pressing my hoof to the wound to stop the bleeding, I allowed myself to drop to the floor, breathing heavily.

I activated my magic to reach into my coat pocket and levitated out a small flask containing a pink, cloudy liquid. Pulling the cork out, I levitated the health potion to my lips and drank half of it in one gulp. It tasted like irradiated dog piss, but that didn’t matter.

What did was the slight energy surge it caused throughout my body, and more importantly, took away some of the pain. I bought the vile around and poured the remaining liquid over the hole in my skin. It wasn’t a very strong potion, but it was enough to get me back onto my hooves… took me two tries, but on my hooves, nonetheless.

I looked down at my still empty rifle and levitated it up off the floor. Having ejecting the empty clip, I went back into my pockets to find a full one. After a few seconds of digging, I was rewarded with a full clip of hollow pointed .308 rounds, which I quickly slammed into the gun.

I couldn’t rest for any longer than I already had. I needed to take out as many slavers as I could before all the griffons were whipped out. I couldn’t allow them to walk free after all the shit that happened here.

As I finally regained my full composure, I looked past the bodies, to the end of the hall. There were a few griffon corpses in front of an open door that I recognized as the closet where they stored all the guns. I was about to make my way over to it when I heard very faint hoof steps behind me.

‘Somepony's trying to be sneaky.’

I spun around and readied my rifle, only to be greeted with the barrel of a Celestia damned grenade rifle. The pony on the other side of the weapon was a green unicorn mare with brown mane and a cocky smirk that was somehow ten times more rage inducing than anything Cross Wings could ever imagine. I groaned and released my magical grip on the rifle, which she then picked up with her own magic.

“Well, well, well. What do we have here?” She sarcastically questioned.

“Oh, wow, isn’t that an original bad guy line.” If this bitch was gonna hold me up than the least I could do was make sure she didn’t enjoy it. She huffed in slight frustration but managed maintained me grin.

“So, since I just saw you kill those guys, it would only be fair if I got to kill you next.” I blinked a few time.

“I'm sorry, I have to know. What kind of mental disability do you have that makes you think that it's a good idea to kill someone with a grenade launcher from barely a foot away?” She grimaced in announce again, this time losing her smirk of pride at having captured an already injured pony with an explosive weapon.

“Oh, I see. You’re trying to make me angry and loss my focus so that you can take me out, right?” I was going to respond with another sarcastic quip, but an idea came to me, which sucked because I had already come up with a few.

“No, I’m just distracting you. NOW.” Her expression turned from smug to surprise mixed with fear. She spun round to see that there was nothing there. As she did I drew my knife and slashed at the back of her neck as she was attempting to turn back to me.

I didn’t cut so deep that kill her immediately, but it was enough to send her sprawling to the floor. Unfortunately, there was still enough life left in her to telekinetically fire the grenade rifle… directly up into the ceiling.

I had no time to react, before a loud explosion and then nothing. Just the black abyss of unconsciousness.

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Footnote: level up

Perk added: hover pony – telekinetically holding yourself in mid-air now uses 20% less magical energy