• Published 14th May 2019
  • 2,370 Views, 1,551 Comments

Unshaken - The 24th Pegasus



The age of gunslingers is coming to an end. As the law closes in on outlaws across the Equestrian southwest, Kestrel must find a way to help her wanted gang of misfits escape or die trying. [A CYOA Story]

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Chapter 28

Go look for medical supplies with the engineer: 39%

There wasn’t any sense chasing the pegasus down; Silver swiftly realized that much. Much as she wanted to get revenge for Kessie, much as she wanted to stop the last witness from getting away and reporting the robbery, she knew she’d never be able to catch her. Not when she was hurt as she was. Besides, she didn’t want to leave Kestrel alone with the engineer. He seemed like he knew her, and she didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. She didn’t want to leave that up to fate.

“Hold on,” she said to Kestrel, her voice wavering. She tore her bandana off of her neck and pressed it over Kestrel’s wound, then put the gunslinger’s hooves over it. “Just… hold that, okay?” she told her. “Don’t let it go, now.”

Kestrel chuckled, though it was more of a wheezing cough. “I know what to do when you get shot,” she gasped. “Don’t worry none. Didn’t shoot my lungs…”

Silver was at least thankful for that; there wasn’t any blood on Kestrel’s lips, so she could at least breathe fine. Still, a gut wound untreated would be the end of the gunslinger, no matter how tough she may be. “I’m gonna find you some potions,” Silver said. “We’re gonna get you back on your hooves, alright?”

“Go, then,” Kestrel said, waving her off with a wing. “I’ll make sure nopony steals the train while you’re gone…”

Silver found herself snickering at the joke despite herself; now really wasn’t the time for this! So, gulping, she spun about and fluttered back over the coal cars, revolvers in their holsters. She didn’t know how many shots she had left in the one; the other was completely empty. Hopefully she wouldn’t need more bullets than she had. It all depended on how trustworthy the engineer was.

She found him nosing around the crates in the first car, squinting at the small stenciled letters to discern their contents. He jumped when he heard Silver land nearby, and he roughly cleared his throat. “I-I’m looking in these cars as best I can, Miss,” he said, moving to the next crate. “I don’t know how the military organized these things, I just take them south and drop them off at Fort Harmony. There’s gotta be something here, though. The soldiers are always getting in skirmishes with buffalo and Abyssinians.”

“Right,” Silver said, moving to the other end of the car and beginning to tear through the crates. She didn’t bother spending time to read the contents; she just jammed her knife under the lids and pried them open one by one. The crates she went through were largely weapon parts for the military’s rifles, though she did manage to pop open a crate filled with brand new double-action revolvers, likely meant for the officers. Another long crate yielded a brass cannon barrel, though the carriage was nowhere to be seen. Not that it would have mattered much, anyway; the cannon would be too heavy of a piece to remove and bring back to camp, and what would the Gang do with it, anyway? Artillery was useless dead weight to a band of outlaws always on the run. She did however find a box full of scoped rifles. Those would be useful; the Gang didn’t have any working scopes, and so long-distance shooting was an impossibility for them.

“Ain’t no medicine in here,” Silver grumbled. She wheeled on the engineer, who was looking back toward the engine worriedly. “Hey!” she snapped, catching his attention. “Ain’t you got a shipping manifest or somethin’? Better than lookin’ through all these crates one after another!”

“There’s probably one in the caboose,” the engineer said. “Officer Dash, she was the one in charge of this shipment. She’d have the papers.”

“I think I’ll take a look, then,” Silver said, spreading her wings. “Keep lookin’. I’ll know if you run.”

With that threat, she flapped her wings and hopped over the rest of the rail cars until she made it to the back. The armored door to the caboose was still slightly ajar, and Silver thanked her lucky stars for that. If that Officer Dash had locked it up before fleeing, then she didn’t know how she was going to get inside. She shouldered the door open with a grunt and found herself standing in what almost looked like a cramped office instead of an officer’s lounge. Maybe the officer liked to keep busy; at any rate, Silver needed to find the manifest, so she began to dig through the drawers until she finally found it.

Her wingtips quickly separated the pages so she could look at them at a glance. Each page seemed to be tied to the contents of a single car; it looked like the first car behind the coal car was meant for upgrading the garrison of Fort Harmony. The car behind that was filled with basic supplies, along with the next two cars. Silver wondered just how large this Fort Harmony was supposed to be with all the supplies and material being sent their way. There was a listing for the armored Chatter gun car detailing its four water-cooled machine guns and all the ammunition supplied for each. Maybe taking a Chatter gun or two out of the train would be helpful in case this brought trouble down on their heads. What was she thinking; of course there would be trouble coming after them. That officer had seen her and Kessie, and it wouldn’t be long before the posters began to appear.

The last two cars caught Silver’s eye. One was just listed as ‘GARRISON SUPPLIES’ instead of a detailed listing of its contents, and the other said ‘GARRISON PAYROLL—MAY/JUNE’. That was good; there was cash on the train, so they wouldn’t have to find some way to exchange all their haul for money. How much, she couldn’t say, but two month’s payroll for a fort garrison had to be a pretty penny…

But she could tear through the payroll car later. Right now, she needed to go find something to treat Kessie’s wounds, and since she was at the back of the train, she decided to start with the car that only said ‘GARRISON SUPPLIES’ in its listing. There had to be something there, right?

It was a covered car instead of a flat bed, and both sides were stacked high with smaller crates, definitely too small to be weapons. She pried one crate out of its place and opened the lid, and she blinked in surprise at the glass vials stuffed in hay and cloth. She gingerly lifted one out, grabbing the top of the bottle in her teeth, and spat it out into her outstretched wings. It wasn’t a healing potion, unfortunately; it was something else. “C3H5N3O9,” Silver read the inscription aloud, frowning at it. She only recognized it a chemical formula, but when she spun it around and read the opposite side of the bottle, her heart jumped into her throat. “Nitroglycerin!”

She gulped and put it back in the crate with the other bottles. Chemistry may have been beyond her, but she knew what Nitroglycerin was. One wrong shake and the entire crate could blow up in an instant. There were runes on the sides of the crate that glowed faintly; she supposed those were keeping it stable for now. Carefully putting the lid back on, Silver slowly pushed it away so she wouldn’t accidentally trip on it. When she looked up and down the walls, she saw many more crates covered in similarly glowing runes, and she felt her stomach clench. One wrong shot and they could have accidentally blown up the entire car…

Is Silver able to find medicine in this car? Yes

Steering well clear of the crates containing who only knew what, Silver began to unpack the crates without runes printed into them. She found rations for the soldiers as well as fresh and salted food for the fort’s kitchens, but her wings began to twitch in excitement when she found a crate full of bandages and gauze. She immediately dug out the other crates near it, and she squealed in joy when she found a crate of large, red potions. There were only three inside, and when she pulled one out, she saw a red cross on it and the words ‘HEALING TONIC – EXTRA POTENT – MAGIC INFUSED’ printed across the label. Without a moment’s hesitation, she cradled one against her chest and darted back to the front of the engine, surprising the engineer as he started to move from the second car to the third.

She fluttered to a stop directly in front of Kestrel and pulled the cork out with her teeth. “Drink!” she commanded, spitting the cork aside and putting the bottle to Kestrel’s lips. She held the bottle in place while Kestrel tilted her head back, and she took it away when the gunslinger began to cough. Her eyes widened in worry, but Kestrel soon let a stream of curses fly from her lips.

“Celestia damn fuckin’ shit!” she swore, wiping her lips. “It tastes like rancid cherries!”

Silver sighed and relaxed, even managing a slight giggle. “Nopony ever said that the waters of life have to taste good,” she said.

“Think I’d rather die than drink more of that swill,” Kestrel teased back.

Kestrel has temporarily regained 3 Healthiness from the potion’s effects.

Kestrel rolls to stabilize: Success

Kestrel rolls to immediately improve her injured status: Fail

Kestrel is now Stabilized but remains Critically Injured. She is in no risk of dying so long as she does not suffer additional damage. Rest and medicine will slowly restore her status to normal.

The gunslinger tried to sit upright, but winced in pain and slouched back against the engine controls. “Gotta get that bullet outta me when we get back to camp,” she grunted. “Ain’t gonna be able to do much ‘til then.” When she took the bandana off of her gut, at the very least, it seemed like the bleeding had nearly completely stopped, all save for the tiniest trickle as the potion began to work its magic.

“Just get your rest,” Silver told her. “The Gang’s comin’, and we’ll get you back to camp.”

“Sounds… sounds like a plan,” Kestrel said, and she closed her eyes. “Think I’ll just… catch a nap.”

She soon drifted off, leaving Silver to watch the slow rise and fall of her chest. Hoofsteps approached as she did so, and she warily looked over her shoulder to see the engineer lingering off to the side. “Is she… will she be okay?” he asked Silver.

“Yeah, I think so,” Silver said, glancing back at Kestrel. “The potion stopped most of the bleedin’. Still gotta get the bullet out.”

That seemed to relieve the engineer some. “Thank Celestia, then.”

“Hey, what’s your deal?” Silver asked him, narrowing her eyes. “I woulda thought most ponies would be happy to see the outlaws takin’ down their train die.”

“Well… maybe most,” he said. But he pointed a hoof in Kestrel’s direction. “But I recognize her. Her name is Kestrel, right?”

Silver reluctantly nodded. “Yeah, don’t see what that means to you. Wait…” Memories came back to her, and she hesitantly stepped a bit closer to the engineer. “Is you a pony named Highball?”

Is the engineer’s name Highball? Yes

Slowly, the engineer nodded. “I am,” he said. “Did she… she tell you about me?”

“The other day, yeah,” Silver said. “I just…” She sat down on the edge of the train in shock. “Here you are, and here we are, robbin’ your train, and I just…” She shook her head in disbelief.

Highball managed a chuckle. “Funny how the world works, ain’t it?”

“Yeah.” But then Silver looked to the north, where the rail lines went across the bridge and back to the canyon. The Gang would be coming soon, and she didn’t know what they would do with Highball if they found him. His life, she realized, may very well be in her hooves.

Silver’s high Honor prevents her from considering killing Highball in cold blood.

1. Make him stay. Tumbleweed knows him, so he might be nice to him. But what about Rough and Snapshot? And even still, it’s been so long since he and Highball met, he might not give him the warm welcome I’m expectin’…

2. Get him to hide. We ain’t gonna be able to take the whole train, so if he stows away someplace until we take all we want, he can go and bring what’s left back to Rock Ridge. Might make the government go easier on us, and it might make him a hero to them who owes us a debt.

3. Chase him off. He’ll have a better chance makin’ it if I let him run. Stayin’ with us is too dangerous, and if he runs, maybe he can get back to town in one piece. Just hope he don’t run into any Viper ponies along the way…

4. Decouple the engine and let him flee with it. It’ll give him the best chance of gettin’ back to Rock Ridge alive, though the sheriff might be suspicious if he gets away like that. But on the other hoof, nopony will be able to steal the train from us if it don’t have an engine.

(Confidence Required: 45 Votes)

Author's Note:

I was worried you guys were going to make Silver chase down the officer who suspiciously shares every appearance with Rainbow Dash, while injured. But the tie-breaking 46th vote went to #2, so we got this chapter instead.

This chapter's poll: https://www.strawpoll.me/18315501

Please use the poll for voting. You can discuss options in the comments, but I will not take anything stated there into consideration when determining the vote.

This story is a CYOA comment-driven story, where you, the readers, decide the outcome of the story. Each poll contains several options, each with sub-optimal choices thrown into the mix, with nothing but the prose to clue the readers into what each option entails. The will of the masses, alongside a few unbiased dice rolls, will decide the outcome of the story.

You can find Kestrel's character sheet, along with some key information about her and the Gang, here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xAGDlcd5mlMTAHwexlsrXOffQMMLoQc12u9itAa-io0/edit?usp=sharing

If you want to see the dice rolls in action, check out my Discord server: https://discord.gg/RsVkdDP

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