RoMS' Extravaganza

by RoMS

2016 project - Fallout:Equestria Break Even - 1

“A business is all about an idea. That idea is the prologue. The business, the adventure. The profit, of course, the treasure.”

*
* *

“Still dreaming, Even?”

I jumped out of my skin, threw off my binoculars. Hissing and gasping, I scampered away until the goggles flew back down and smashed in the back of my head. My heart drumming with dread, I lied my head buried in the dirt for a split second before I spun over. Hoping to fend off the sneak attack, I threw my hooves and laid eyes upon my opponent, and finally calmed down.

“Fuckin’ Mother Cap!” I blared, neighing out a long whine as I dropped a hoof on my beating chest. “Cat’! Don’t sneak up on me like that…”
My business partner smirked back at me with a fair share of disappointment in her blue eyes. As I didn’t answer, she joined me in gazing at the landscape. I grumbled about as I picked up my now cracked goggles.

Scanning over the land with them was a tedious task. An ever-present smoke burned our lungs and made it hard to see. I had stopped counting the high-reaching pyres strewn before my eyes an hour ago. And it reeked.

“You’re crazy, Even,” she whispered. “You know that city’s dangerous. With your head in the pegasi-damned clouds, you gonna get us killed.”

Ablaze for what had surely been days, the fires filled the sky with ichor. If the Vault Dweller had really opened the sky like DJ-Pon3 said, we were standing somewhere definitely out of her reach. We were close to noon yet the sky was dark, dry and hellishly hot. At least, it didn’t rain.

“I wasn’t star-gazing, Catalina...” I frowned in discontent behind my binoculars. “Well… maybe a bit, just a teeny tiny bit.”

We stood on top of nearby hill made of scrap. Though it was a vantage point, I couldn’t see much. Anything worth my caps was definitely somewhere behind those big fortifications. I rubbed my eyes, expecting to clear my vision, and watched again over long and crumbled concrete battlements.

A sickly red hue crept over a ruined city recently brought to its knee. That bloody glow perspired through each shattered windows, reflected over the mud and struck me with morbid curiosity. The red that stained the streets was slowly washing away while grim shadows danced over countless bodies left to rot across barricaded boulevards.

The rumble of a building crashing down reached my ears. The home of death was shining brighter than any light-bulb had ever done for two centuries and too many had waited for that end to come. Fillydelphia was burning and it just made me smile.

“I know that face,” Catalina mumbled, gazing at me like I was a damn book, “and I don’t like it.”

I grumbled back when she poked me in the side. Well… let’s say I told her to ‘fuck off’. She yanked my mane back and I whined as she forced our eyes to meet. Mild disappointment and some bottled-up anxiety, the kind of stares she granted me much too often.

“You’ve got an idea.” Why did she have to make it sound like I was a mad scientist? I was just a wandering merchant! “You know how I feel about that.”

“I think we can pull something here,” I grunted back, smacking my mane out of her grasp with the back of my hoof. “Can’t you see that?”

I pointed at Fillydelphia while I picked and rolled the inside of my cheeks between my teeth. Couldn’t she see that? I was onto an opportunity. I had a business idea. And I was ready to go in there. She was the one always talking about investing our funds into projects. There was my venture. She didn’t criticize it. She didn’t reply at all as a matter of fact.

“Fuck off,” I suggested again.

Her haunches dropped on the dirt and she crossed her legs to cover her eyes. We both let out a long breath and didn’t talk for a moment. I hated when silence was the only answer.

“You take care of the accounts,” I initiated, rubbing my clunky neck with my hoof. “We. Need. Cash. You know that better than I do. And this city… it’s a lifetime chance.”

Her ears drooped a little and there she went rubbing her eyes like I had sprinkled sand in them. She didn’t even try to tame down that massive growl of hers.

“I never asked you to risk our lives in that city of death,” she scolded.

I closed my eyes behind my binoculars, letting my eye-sockets rest against the item, and the item against the ground. Dirt was so interesting that time of the year…

“Look,” I shot. “You know that I felt like something was happening with that Vault Dweller, right…? Am I right?!”

She hesitated for a second but didn’t answer. I took that as a nod.

“Does that mean you knew about that cauterize operation or whatnot?” she advanced.

“No,” I dryly laughed. “I would have loved though… To be honest, we were just lucky to be a week away from Fillydelphia when all the fuss started.”

I wiped the dirt off my binocular lenses onto my cornsilk fur, leaving two streaks of brown on it. My belly growled with hunger. I had only water for the past two days.

“What a chance you dragged me in the most dangerous place out there…” And here she went the sarcasm… again. “Very much thanks, Even.”

The city was definitely dead. War torn and fresh, ready to be harvested. The wreckage and its casualties were all that remained. What was down there was now only known by those who had managed to flee. Rumors were rumors but the truth? Only those who had died had it. Pegasi, slavers and slaves now rested in peace. And pieces. I chortled at the thought, which didn’t last. Catalina had smacked the back of my head.

“What are you thinking about?” she rumbled.

“Oh, nothing,” I lied, shaking my head off.

She wacked my left ear.

“Speak to me, for my sake!” she vented.

I massaged the hit spot and kept on chuckling. After a few minutes, I gave a big yawn and finally shared a look with my partner, letting my binoculars dangle around my neck. She wasn’t happy.

“Fucking empty head,” she muttered under her breath, turning away from me.

“I know. I know,” I cooed back as she watched over the chimneys towering Fillydelphia. “I think we’re the first scavenger around since the city fell.”

“And you think it’s a place for a merchant and his Brahmin?” she retorted with a voice that rang like a gunshot. “What about the raiders… slavers still inside? And the slaves? I’ve heard terrible things about what they do because of hunger.”

Not that I wasn’t going to do anything because of hunger…

I caught the brown and beige Brahmin’s grimace. Her two heads were torn with anxiety.

“Come on, Cat’,” I comforted, patting her on the heads. “You’re a big, intelligent girl. If I don’t know when to pull out, just tell me.”

“Didn’t I mention that in Friendship City already? Detrot? My Amie? God you’re thicker than a Brahmin’s forehead.”

We finally laughed. If some cows were considered lucky, Catalina could brag she was among the twice-lucky ones.

“Detrot…” I wandered in my thoughts. “I’d settle there. Business ops are fresh there.”

“I know you won’t.”

“Come on,” I whined, hugging her at the shoulders. “You’re a great partner. We will make a fortune together.”

With tired eyes, she sighed, “If you say so.”

We watched in silence over the dead hell before us. It was easy to forget it was still somehow Red Eye’s den. A gunshot rang afar and a disincarnated scream echoed in its wake, shushed a few seconds later.

“I think we did a mistake by recruiting my two old raiders,” I voiced after a painful gulp, looking over my shoulder to check that the two concerned earth ponies weren’t listening.

“Tribals,” Catalina countered.

I frowned at her.

“Eh, What?”

“They ain’t raiders, Even,” she continued. “They would have killed us right out the street when we met.”

“Oh, they are raiders, Cat’. But bear with me on this, the two down there… They owe me some...”

“Services?” she ended for me with not much conviction and a raised eyebrow.

“Eeyup,” I confirmed. “Otherwise, they are pure bred raiders. Old pals.”

Who said brahmin’s eyes couldn’t grow that big and menacing. As a result, I dunk my head between my shoulders and cowered away slowly. Maybe she wouldn’t notice. Then she calmed down and sighed.

“You’ve got interesting friends,” she noted.

“Long story,” I said, raising a hoof to cut any word from pouring out of her mouth. “Don’t ask for detail. It’s between the Cuts and I.”

The Cuts… The mare and stallion, twin by birth, who currently sat next to a campfire set further below the hill. From time to time we could hear them swears. They had been playing an exotic game for a few hours now. Backgammon it was called and, to my knowledge, they were the only ponies to do so in the whole damn Wasteland.

“You think they will turn on us?” Catalina whimpered, trying to bottle-up some panic mania only she could display. “Why are you saying you should have recruited more?”

“Cat’… Cat’,” I sighed, letting my rump hit the dirt while I patted her closest head. “No. I don’t pinch pick my contractors like I do with… my food, I guess. I trust them both.”

I stared back at the burning city. Who knew what awaited in the ruins of Fillydelphia? Slavers still kicking? Husks of slaves? Death or Fortune? I didn’t know and I was terribly impatient to make an idea for myself. And with the Cuts as our bodyguards, it should be a breezy. I knew them. They knew me. All was fine. Everything would be fine.

“I think I haven’t recruited enough ponies for that scavenger party,” I confessed after drawing a short breath. “That’s what I’m thinking about.”

Catalina snapped a small book out of my saddlebag. Biting over her lips, she glared hard at me with a mix of disappointment and down-to-earth attitude.

“We didn’t have the money,” she chipped in. “Accounts are in the red.”

“Thus why we’re here,” I stated again. “It’s a gold mine down there. Red Eye’s dead. His troops are… mostly dead. Time to harvest and make a profit for ourselves.”

“An’ us too,” a rough voice cackled in my back.

Cat’ and I jumped the further away from the voice and I landed on top of her – at least it wasn’t the opposite, not that I was calling her fat. Two foul-smelling ponies with messy rosy manes glared at us with threatening red eyes carved into scarred light steel blue faces. They wore dirty, patched-up armors, ones that had seen battles. A true knight is known by how weary his equipment looks. But those weren’t knights. They were raiders.

“Don’t worry, bro,” the mare slurred, patting her brother’s shoulder blades. “Break Even’s good pal. He won’t try to fuck us over. Could he? Eh, eh… he can hardly stand to his name.”

Thank you very much, Sharp Cut…

Sharp Cut was the most talkative of the two siblings. Her brother, Cutting Edge, was a pony of a few often incoherent words. Both fought close-combat like it was some kind of lost art and their hooves talked for them. The two had carried out the ritual taught by their forbearers even after their gang went extinct. Twice a year, they dipped their four hooves into molten iron, seeking to strengthen their body, mind and their uppercuts… It was peculiar and I always had doubts about the practice, especially when it could make them less… apt to be efficient bodyguards. Their last ritual had occurred five days ago and here they were kicking around like foals. I still couldn’t stare at their furless legs without a grimace, they reminded me mines.

I was myself an earth pony with a dirty white coat and a blonde and chocolate mane. Compared to my three team members, I was physically underperforming with not much to even the chances in a fight. But they were friends, or at least I thought them to be. I wore saddlebags made of Brahmin leather –Cat’ never said anything about it– and the only weapon I had was a self-made shotgun. Never fired it though. I was a trader and I paid for my security. Speaking of which, I shook my head and focused back on Sharp and Cutting.

“You ready?” I glanced down at Sharp’s forehooves. “I wouldn’t want you both in pain to…”

“Shoo,” she cut me off with a grin of her yellowish, shark-filed teeth. “We’ve never been pantsies like you. Hurting is good. It keeps us awake.”

Blabbering any witty remark was a bad idea with Sharp Cut. She wasn’t the mare to accept critics. Even less from me.

“Look guys,” I began, walking in between the two siblings. “I expected to go out at night but…”

I waved at the city and its horrendously thick black clouds throwing the city into darkness.

“You get me,” I kept going. “That city must be a goldmine for stuff like ammo, weapons, ingots, anything.”

“Well, duh!” Sharp grinned. “We ain’t your mules though. You paid us for protection, not transport. You’ve got a Brahmin for that stupid stuff.”

The raider mare elbowed Catalina whose face grew darker but didn’t waver. Cutting’s dumb laugh didn’t help in the regard.

“Break,” Cat’ muttered through gritted teeth. “Do something…”

I merely shrugged and she ambled away to sit as further away from Sharp as she could, not leaving me time to do anything.

“So, pretty face,” Sharp purred in my ear, “what’s today’s catch? You want to grab some chems in dem basements? Steals the weapons in the pit? Stockpiles the Red Eye’s slave collars?”

“Casts,” I broke in.

“Casts?”

Cat’, Sharp and Cutting had all said the magic word. Tasting the suspense in the air, I walked to the nearest rock against which I could lay my back. With a smile and tilting my head to mimic tipping an absent cowboy hat, I prepared my answer.

“How do you think ammos and weapons started flowing the Wasteland over the past decade?”

“Better scavengers?” Cutting breached in with a creeping smile.

He instantly earned a smack from his sister.

“Shut up,” she growled.

“Red Eye found blue prints and old factories in Fillydelphia. And he built those back up!” I explained. “And he had the Wasteland flooded with weapons, armors, ammo… Do you know that…”

“So what?” Sharp broke off my tirade.

I facehoofed.

“Look, creating a bullet, or a weapon requires a lot of things and some of those are casts and molds,” I detailed, hammering the floor with my hoof. “I want those casts.”

“You want to become an arm-dealer?” Catalina gasped, stepping away.

“Big words,” I snarled. “Bullets are the most useful items out there in the Waste. And nearly nobody knows how they are made.”

“Not true, we scavenged them,” Sharp countered, biting on her tongue like she had outwitted me.

“When was the last time you did find bullets in a trashcan or an envelope,” I huffed. “You loot bullets off traders’ bodies, right?”

Sharp stayed silent for a few second, scrunched her face to finally giggle like a foal. Her eyebrows raised, she glanced at me with mild amusement.

“You know the deal, Even.” She smiled with those Devil’s teeth. “You’ve seen how it works.”

A trickle of sweat rolled down my neck and I rubbed my legs together. They were tingling and I was cold. I shouldn’t sweat when I was cold.

“Yeah,” I muttered.

“Anyway,” Cat’ chimed in. “You made us crawl to Fillydelphia for bullet casts?”

“Easy road from rags to riches,” I foretold. “The wasteland needs bullets and if I don’t go in and make them, somepony else will.”

“So that’s it?” Cat’ said, hiding her enjoyment far too well. “We’re going to risk our life to find casts to make whatever stuff we can…? We’re itinerant merchants, Even! What in the goddamn fucking Wasteland don’t you understand about the word itinerant?”

“Shut up,” I snapped, my neck twitching. “You’re always talking about putting the rifle on the rack, settling in… finding that… good patch of grass wherever you want. You’re just wishful thinking, Cat’! For once listen. I’ve got here the opportunity for you to settle. We won’t be young forever. So for the Wasteland Savior’s grace, shut up for once and do that!”

She hit me… What? For my ass’s sake, she smashed her hoof in my face.

“I’m sorry,” I apologized, a hoof pressed on my hurt cheek.

She was crying.

“Oh, don’t do that to me, Cat’?” I gulped, rummaged my tongue inside my mouth with teary eyes. “We do it one last time. I think I’m right on that one.”

She huffed and that was the most painful one she ever gave me, “It’s always about you, isn’t it? You want to prove things to yourself, Even…”

She sighed and looked at the bleeding sky.

“We do it one last time,” she said, listening to the wind’s complain across the land.

“One last time,” I repeated with a smile.

I crawled back up to my hooves and stared at Fillydelphia. So many had died there and I was going to make a profit out of it. Like a true businessman. I shook my head and glanced at Sharp and her brother. Both had their face scrunched up like they had bit into a mutant lime crossbred with a taint pepper

“What?” Cat’ barked at them, taking the words out of my mouth.

Sharp raised her hooves in the air, zebra-like.

“Your couple’s affairs,” the raider mare defended. “Not mine and that’s as good as it is.”

Cat’ and I shared a look. We rolled our eyes and started walking down the hill.

“Grab your chips and board, Sharp,” I called. “We’re going in.”

She frowned and spoke up, “We’re ready?”

“What do you think?” I deadpanned. “I’ve watched over the fucking city for the past three hours.”

An infantile smile on her face, she drew a short breath and raised her hoof to make a point.

“I’ll explain the plan en route,” I cut off with a growl. “We move now.”

Well… we spent most of the walk to the walls of Fillydelphia in silence. The plan took me less than a minute to explain in fact. I had spotted a crack in the fortification wide enough to let a tank go through. With all the black marks around the hole, my bet was that we owed that opening to some ammo storage explosion. Fillies should know not to play with fire around a powder keg.

The opening was located not far from the Fillydelphian factories and nobody voiced any other alternative. As such, we didn’t stall outside the fortifications and walked in the opening, leading us directly into a carbonized basement, leveled and smelling of charcoal.

“Eeyup, ammo flashover,” Sharp confirmed, biting on a smashed up piece of copper.

It was a tank shell casing, melted, pierced through and through and smashed by the utter hell that engulfed into that basement. The ground was covered with holes and stubs of metal had gnawed into the concrete, making it hard to walk around. I could still see the demarcation of where had once stood walls. The streak of ammo explosions had clawed at the fortifications and soil like a hot spoon into an ice-cream –You wonder how I know that? I’ve seen ice-cream once in my life, awesome, duh! That basement had probably be a sizeable stockyard before the Operation Cauterize, measuring around forty yards over thirty. The place was now twice its original size, the explosions having eaten through the stories above and the ground below and aside.

“Welp,” Cat’ coughed, breaking the stark silence that had settled between us, “I’m glad I wasn’t in there when it happened.”

“Hey! Look, look!” Sharp called extensively, rushing around a spot of concrete that had made through the furnace, bullets and shells.

Cat’ and I frowned as we tip-toed our way to Sharp and her brother. She was pointing small black dots embedded in the ground. I drew closer.

“Are those… teeth?” Sharp pondered with a sick smile crawling on her cheek.

Cat’ and I stared back at her.

“That’s disgusting,” Cat’ stole the words from me.

“Pussy,” she mused.

Cutting crawled below her, ransacked into his saddleback and flashed a torchlight under her sister’s chin. Sharp jumped on her backlegs and went on waving her front hooves over her head. I raised an eyebrow. Cat’s mouth slightly dangled open.

“You gonna enter the den of the moooonster,” she croaked, taking on some badly imitated ghoul’s voice. “There, blood flows so hold on onto your bowels.”

She screamed, Cat’ screamed, I screamed. And she jumped out of the lamp’s light, grabbing a hold of Cat’s two heads with a lock of her right hoof. Her face crawled slowly to Cat’s eye level. In the darkness, only a faint light reflecting on their eyes and Sharp’s shark teeth gave their positions.

“You gonna die up there if you don’t buckled up, meat-stick,” Sharp panted out a laugh.

Cat’ hacked out of Sharp’s hold and glared daggers at the raider.

“You sick bitch,” she rasped, sweeping off some of Sharp’s drool. “What do a fucking raider like you even know about that place?”

Cutting was already out the other side of the blown up basement and Sharp was following him close. A hoof outside, the light steel blue mare turned around and pushed one of her strands of rosy mane behind her ear.

“Some raiders read books and listen to the radio, b-i-a-t-c-h.” She savored her words, feasting on Cat’s disgust, anger and disdain for her. With a chuckled and a roll of her eyes, she shook her head. “Who am I kidding?”

She spun on her hooves and stared at something that I hadn’t seen yet. Her face lit up with the light of a nearby fire and I stopped in my track as a wide grin stretched up her face.

“Yeah,” she spoke to herself before walking out of sight. “It’s good to be home.”

Cat’ and I shared a febrile glance and we gulped down. One after the other we walked up and found ourselves right in the middle of a battlefield.

Fires everywhere. Stakes where dead bodies piled on top of the other vanishing into dust and smoke. Exploded howitzers. Limbs. Blood. Craters. Unexploded ordinances. A few pegasus vehicles disemboweled by missile hits. Barricades wherever to see. And the smell… That smell. Death. I retched and emptied myself. Cat’ ran to the closest building probably to do the same.

When I lifted my head, my eyes darted on a known figure. Sharp was dancing among the rubbles, listening to her whistling while her hooves rolled over thousands of empty shells that covered the asphalt. So much bullets I couldn’t see the concrete. So much bullets I felt I could still hear the echoes of the battle that had taken place there.

Screaming.

And it was Catalina’s.

Sharp dashed forward, cutting my track, and jumped through a broken window of the building we’d seen Cat’ enter. I blasted through the opened doorframe of what had once been a store, refurbished into a machine-gun nest. The machine-gun lied on the floor, a bullet having smashed into its bore.

Sharp had already run deeper into the fortified building, rushing up a series of staircases. As I jumped over a rotting body, I followed through. The aftermaths of one ugly post-apocalyptic war were everywhere to be seen. Bullet holes and laser impacts covered the walls. The fight had been fierce and bloody.

It’s nauseous that I reached the fourth floor and head-butted into Sharp’s rump. Shaking my head I focused on our dear Brahmin. She was petrified, her eyes riveted on a shape hidden in the shadow of a crumpled closet.

That’s when I saw the state of the room –and of that level at the same occasion. Everything bore black marks, the wooden door frames had burned away, as did most of the furniture. The windows lied broken and melted on the floor. Any two hundred years old paint that could have still stuck onto the decrepit walls had washed away. Hellfire had licked over this place and it smelled like smoked flesh, the one still hanging from bodies some ravenous birds had already pecked. Flamethrowers, such ugly things.

Cat’ was looking at what had once been a pegasus mare, her legs spread and broken and her wings dangling across her back. She was nested into a ball against a wall and the ashes on the ground marked a trail, starting with the ante-shadow left by a flamethrower against an adjoining wall. She had dragged herself under the wardrobe to find refuge. I sighed. That was a horrible death. Burnt but not dead yet, having to wait organ failures, hunger or thirst to deal the misericord. But why was Cat’ so scared? What had she seen? The shape budged and my mane crawled.

“Help,” the body gargled. “Water…”

Her cheeks crisped like dried, crackled mud, peeling away at each of her complaints, seeping red. Only one of her eyes opened, marking her destroyed face with a completely off-white, iris-less ball. Her hissing lungs breathed out, coughed themselves out. Tension hung between Cat’, I and the pegasus. It was too late anyway. And I wasn’t up to wasting my rations. But…

It was bad. I should do better… And that’s when I heard a chortle.

Cat’ and I swiveled over and locked on Sharp. She was holding her sides, bottling in an infectious laughter while she elbowed her brother for his approval.

“You think dying from fire gives you a discount at the crematorium?” She chuckled.

Their laugh was terrible.

I looked back at the mare and saw Cat’ handling over a small bottle of purified water. There went ten caps but I wasn’t going to stop her.

“Drink, miss,” she whispered.

Sharp snapped her way through to Cat’ and grabbed her hoof.

“She’s gonna die when she drinks,” Sharp warned. “You okay with that?”

“It’s mercy,” Cat’ snarled. “Now off of me, raider.”

Sharp took a step back and stared down at the wreck of a pony. So did I. Cat’ held the bottle to the pegasus’s lips. The mare couldn’t move anymore. Could she feel anything, anyway? Fire had probably destroyed her skin and the nerves beneath. Could she even cry? She gulped slowly and let out a breath of relief.

“There you go,” Cat’ reassured, throwing a death glare at Sharp.

The mare vomited, arched her back in tremendous pain and a scream hacked his way out of her lungs. She shook, rasped and squealed. Cat’s face bleached out of its colors.

I couldn’t even say those were screams. Barely short, painful and wracking wheezes. Her hooves hammered on the ground, clawing at the burnt parquet in a vain attempt to escape pain. A pain I couldn’t even wrap my head around.

Sharp’s hoof knocked down the mare’s head. A deep gashes that didn’t bleed sent the mare to the ground. She went silent and only final quivers snaked across her limbs. Sharp didn’t quit looking at the poor sod for a few seconds. She didn’t breathe. She didn’t talk. And we waited till the unconscious body gave out a last breath.

“Let’s go,” I suggested.

Nobody peeped a word as we walked out and down the stairs. When we finally stepped back outside the ruined building, I looked down the street. Past a dozen barricades, most of which were simple patches of metal sheaths bolted together, was a massive square. The square gave onto a gigantic building who displayed five large and sky-reaching chimneys which still spat a dense smog. There was the industry block. As we made our way further, looking at each window hoping nopony was watching, Sharp and Cutting walked apart.

“Wait for us in the booth there,” Sharp ordered, pointing at a close wooden shack on the right side of the road.

Each scampered away in the buildings on each side of the street. Meanwhile, Cat’ and I walked into what had probably been a checkpoint. The shack was built with only one tiny window which offered some cover. I grabbed my rusty shotgun and held it against my chest as Cat’ and I pressed ourselves inside the shack.

Being the nearest to the window, I peered an eye outside and saw a shadow on the fifth story of the building on the left side of the road. Cutting had called dibs on it and it was probably him. At least I thought as a scream echoed from there. A still unbroken window shattered, followed by a short whistle and a loud thump. Looking again, I saw a body staining the concrete. It was a dull yellow earth pony stallion with a large collar around his neck. The thing was beeping.

A cloud of red splattered around the pony with a teeth-grinding pop and I hid back inside the shack. A gunshot rang shortly after and wood splintered over my mane.

Raising my eyes, I witnessed a new hole in the wood through which slithered a sick reddish ray of light. A second hole blast to life and I hissed at Cat’.

“Move out!”

Cat’ ran outside and towards the closest building, passing through a doorframe long without its door. We head-butted against Sharp’s backside and shambled one over the other. Opening my eyes, I faced the end of a sawed-off barrel.

“Who’re you?” a sheepish voice called.

The two-gauge shotgun was shaking terribly, held at the pommel by a skeletal turquoise green mare. She was missing her mane and only a matted patch of dark red fur still dangled at the tip of her tail. Huge dark bags scarred her cheeks under her eyes. She had a slave collar too. Her eyes darted between Cat’ and me, until they settled on Sharp’s flank, and her cutie mark: a pony skull pierced at its top by a corkscrew.

“Slavers…” the mare blabbered, her eyes tearing up.

“Wait,” I coughed.

Snapping, she stared right at me. A trapped animal. Terror behind pony’s eyes.

“Wait!” I cried.

She aimed at me and shot. The buckshot grazed at my fur but smashed through my saddlebag, spilling out its content. I rolled over Cat’ and scampered away in a corner, leaving enough space for Sharp to slip from under the Brahmin. Shaking her head, she found herself right in the line of fire.

The former slave mare looked at the raider and raised the gun in a halo of blue. She was a unicorn, trickling with sweat, making her skin shin under the light coming from the nearby windows. Her ribs formed mountains below her overstretched skin. Her face was round and fairly underdeveloped… She was small too. She was just a damn teen.

Cutting barged through a window and rammed into the girl. The shotgun cashed out its last shell, nibbling into Sharp’s mane before flying against a wall. The two ponies hadn’t touched the ground yet that Cutting’s hooves were already dropping hard. Cracks after cracks sent shiver crawling down my spine as I grabbed onto Cat’s back and we backed up in a corner. Tearing up at the mare’s face, Cutting made great use of his metal-covered hooves, smashing down in a mist of red until a clank against concrete rang. The raider nagged his teeth on the beeping collar, spun and threw the lifeless mess out the door. A pop echoed in my ears and the air became a little redder.

I was heaving hard, a hoof held on my beating chest. I nibbled on the skin just above my hoof. I wanted away, praying I could melt through the cracks in the wall behind me. To no avail.

“It’s fine,” Sharp whispered to herself before turning to. “It’s fine. She’s dead now.”

Her voice came to me like through a lead blanket.

“You’re okay, Break?” Cat’ whispered in my ears.

I tasted blood as I had bitten a bit too deep. The little spike of pain brought me back to lucidity.

“I’m… I’m fine,” I retched.

“You look like you miss something,” Sharp giggled.

“My innocence,” I deadpanned, forcing myself back onto my hooves.

She snarled, “Like you ever got one,” and shrugged, walking to the nearest window to get a short look at the outside.

The light put her in stark relief and shone over the blood matting her traits.

“You’re hurt!” Cat’ gasped.

Sharp turned over and frowned, rubbing the drying grim off her face.

“Nah. It’s just the mare’s buckbuddy’s blood,” she casually said, pointing at the door where a hoof was visible. “Caught them sleepin’.”

We had killed ponies who had only be free for a week. Ponies that were terrified of us to be the monsters that had enslaved them… We were the bad guys…

“Well, time to go. Those casts aren’t going to loot themselves,” Sharp laughed before throwing us a numbing glare. “We go now.”

Cutting thumped his hoof twice, catching our attention. Crawling beneath a windowless frame, he growled and waved his hoof in sign of deterrent. You know, Cutting and Sharp always surprised me with their cutie marks. Cutting’s was a pony skull pierced at its bottom by a corkscrew. Sharp and he were undoubtedly siblings.

“One I couldn’t find,” he rumbled, the only words he would say for the rest of the day.

“Change of planning, peeps,” Sharp called. “We go through the building till the square. Too dangerous outside.”

Meanwhile, I had untied what remained my saddlebags, discarding the one riddled with holes. I had only one pouch left where I pushed in what remained of my belongings. The slave’s buckshot had smashed two health potions to pieces. That was quite a sum to amortize. I had only my gun, five rations and a few shells left, along with two bottles of purified water.

With Cutting heading the procession, we worked our way through the floors till we reached the last one before the roof. Somepony had hammered out a hole in the wall, giving enough space even for Cat’ to crawl into the adjoining building.

Night fell when we reached the building the closest to the square. We had weaved through blown up walls, shell craters into the façades and makeshift wood bridges between the stories. Using the cover of the night, we finally descended and ventured on the massive square we had spotted earlier. I was tired and so was everypony else, even though Sharp and her brother wouldn’t confess it.

“I suggest we crawl into a safe spot and call it a night,” I yawned, captivated by a blinking streetlamp a hundred yards from where I stood.

“Was thinking the same,” Cat’ panted, scratching her sore legs.

“Yep,” Sharp mumbled.

Cutting dragged our group toward a smelly and dried canal. We soon found a draining pipe large enough to make our way in. We took turns at the entry and everypony slowly started to drift asleep.

Morning came without an incident and surprisingly enough, it was Sharp who woke me up. Where I had expected a scream from a nearby murder, her shaking my shoulder was quite welcomed.

“We gotta move,” she hushed. “Now.”

And me who thought it was starting so well.

“War. War never changes,” she advised me with a tear streaking her eye, “and the best time to buy out is when there is blood on the streets.”

“LET US OUT, CAT’!” I screamed, hammering my hooves on the bulletproof glass.

The bandolier of grenades rang incessantly at my hooves. No time. I turned to Sharp and her brother.

“DO SOMETHING!”

Fear in her eyes. Her brother desperately scanned the room for a way out.

“Sorry, Break Even,” Cat’ said as she turned away. “You were a good friend.”

I mashed my hooves again and again. Rip them if I must. I needed out. To live.

“DON’T DO IT!” I cried. “PLE-EASE.”

“But you were a bad business partner.”

Sharp darted into a corner and rolled into a ball. Cutting jumped forward. And I? I screamed.

I saw fire.