> Fallout Equestria: Recovery
>  by Archace
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Chapter 1: Rivet
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

*Beep, Beep, Beep*

“Ugh,” I groaned as my Pip-Buck’s new message alert went off. 

*Click*

TO: Rivet Turner
FROM: DeadBolt Turner
SUBJECT: Talisman Pipe Clogged 
Hey, get your ass down to water control. Something’s blocking one of the Talisman’s main output pipes. Clear it out and send me the report. And hurry the fuck up, I've already had four ponies come to me complaining and the Overmare’s getting annoyed.

I slowly pulled myself out of bed and closed the new message, dimming the glaring screen. I didn’t like mornings. Especially mornings when I’m awoken with a new message on my Pip-Buck.

A Pip-Buck is a leg mounted computer with a large variety of functions that range from item and tool management to playing radio broadcasts. There are even some functions for combat purposes but I didn’t have any use of those; they were for ponies in security. I mostly used it for sending messages, like the majority of Stable 12, and running diagnostics on maintenance equipment. As I slipped on my utility barding, I stumbled, hitting my horn on my nightstand.

*Crack*

“Fuck!” ...I really didn’t like mornings.

It was still early; most ponies were still asleep, other than some security ponies that work the late shift. Hopefully problem was just some blockage or at least something I could fix before breakfast. Talisman control was on maintenance level B, so it was a couple floors below the main level.

Unfortunately when I arrived at the Talisman room I was greeted with about a half inch of water. One of the pipes was busted and was spraying out a shower of water. This was going to take a bit longer than removing some blockage. Even walking over to the shutoff valve was enough to be completely drenched. 

I levitated the new pipe into place and secured it to the couplings. While I waited for the adhesive to dry I filled out the maintenance report and sent it to DeadBolt. The pipe didn't take as long to fix as I thought it would, so I could still make it to breakfast. I turned the valve back on and made my way up to the cafeteria.  As I climbed the stairs back up the main floor, a voice called to me.

“Hey, Rivet! Wait up.” It was Lugnut, another maintenance pony. He was one of the few maintenance ponies that I had ever talked to. At the moment he was carrying a bag of tools in his mouth so his speech was pretty garbled. “Haff you sheen your brother? He asked me to fetpch him shome tools and now he’sh not in his office.”  

“Oh, uh, hey Lugnut. No, sorry, haven't seen him this morning.” Thank the goddesses, I thought to myself. I didn’t want to deal with him yet. “Maybe he’s working on something for the Overmare, go try her office.” 

Lugnut just shifted around for a second. “You know whbat, maybe I’ll jusht wait in hish opfice. I’ll see ya around, Rifvet,” he said before walking off.

I understood why he didn’t want to go see the Overmare. Lately she’s been irritated with something. Then again, almost everypony in Stable 12 was aggravated about something. 

Breakfast was almost over by the time I finally got to the cafeteria, I wasted no time getting my tray and finding a seat next to my favorite ruby-colored mare.

Instead of a pleasant greeting I was met with an irritated, “Rivet! Where have you been all morning?” 

“Sorry Rose, DeadBolt had me fixing a pipe downstairs.” Rose was probably the only pony in the stable I would call a friend. I don’t know why but I found talking to her easier than most others.

“That brother of your’s always has you fixing something! Can’t he give you a break? It’s not like there aren’t enough of you ponies down there to take some of the slack.”

She wasn’t wrong about that. Here in Stable 12 you got your job assignment the day after you got your cutie mark.  You would think that somepony would take your talents into consideration when giving your job. It would probably mean happier and better workers. Instead, you get whatever job needed filling. If there was nothing that needed filling you either got thrown to security or maintenance, which meant that there were a lot of maintenance ponies, most of which didn’t know the first thing about fixing anything. 

“It’s fine Rose. There is a lot to fix in this stable. DeadBolt can’t handle it all.” To be honest, actually liked my job, and whenever DeadBolt didn’t have me running round all of the Stable, I was usually down in the Maintenance levels repairing anything I could find that needed fixing. Not having my brother as my boss would be a nice change, but still I couldn’t complain.

“I just think it’s unfair that you do more work than anypony else down there. Listen, I have to get to work and later I'm going to have a talk with DeadBolt.” Rose had a tendency to try solve other ponies’ problems, regardless of whether she was asked to or not.

“Please don’t. All you’ll do is make him think I’m a wimp and he’ll only add to my work load.” Not to mention probably kick my flank. 

“If you refuse to talk to your brother, then I will.” She gave me an expression that told me I didn’t really have a choice in the matter.

“Ugh...Fine, I'll talk to DeadBolt about getting some more time off.” I conceded, like a foal being told to clean his room.

“Good.” As she turned to leave my Pip-Buck started beeping again. 

A message from DeadBolt. Rose turned and gave me a questioning stare. 

“I’ll talk to him.” I said flatly. She just smiled and walked away

TO: Rivet Turner
FROM: DeadBolt Turner
SUBJECT: Quick Job
Hey, I want you to go down to Maintenance C and run a diagnostic check on all hatches down there. One of the recyclers keeps jamming up and we need to know why before we shut it off so we can fix it quick. Get your ass down there and report to my office when your done.

“I guess I'd better eat on the way down there.” I said to myself. Then looking at the tray of various apple food products I decided to just take a plain apple. Stable 12 grew almost all its food in an orchard, and in that orchard we grew one thing: Apples. 

Just about all of our food was various apple products: Apple pie, apple fritters, apple crisps, baked apples, apple sauce, apple juice, apple cider, and, of course, raw apples.  Needless to say you got a little sick of them after a while. I probably would have just left without grabbing anything, but Rose worked in the orchard and I felt bad for her hard work go to waste. 

Maintenance C was the lowest of the Stable’s maintenance levels, which meant it was the very bottom of the Stable. There wasn’t much down here other than the access hatches for the computers that ran some of the larger machines in the Stable. The only reason anypony ever came down here was to either check the computers or have to find some privacy. Thankfully there was nopony going at it down here today. I wasn’t always so lucky.

I unlocked the first hatch and found 5 softly glowing green monitors. I groaned. This was going to take forever. PipBucks have a cord that allows one to plug into almost any terminal. I plugged into the first one and starting running the diagnostic scan. A few minutes later the scan finished. 

One issue detected, one issue resolved. The scan we used would diagnose any problems with the machines and any with the computer it was plugged into. Any malfunctions on the computer’s side would be fixed automatically by the program, but if a recycler was jamming, my Pip-Buck wasn’t going to fix it. If only it would have been that easy. I unplugged from the first terminal and started my scan on the second.

I turned on the Stable’s music broadcast to help pass the time. The Overmare only played old songs from before the war, and only a few of them were any good. I turned it off as soon as the second song started when I was met with some horrible repetitive screeching. We had more than a few ponies who were very good at singing and writing songs, I just wish the Overmare would let them put a few into the regular circulation. 

I finally found the terminal that corresponded with the malfunctioning recycler after looking through about a dozen hatches. The scan revealed it needed a new belt. I was going to kill DeadBolt, I had just spent over an hour scanning terminals because a recycler needed a new belt. There were a few minor fixes that my Pip-Buck took care of but other than that I had just been wasting my time down here. 

I looked over to see that there was only one hatch left. Well, I've already been down here this long, a little longer wouldn’t hurt, and it might prevent further issues.  I didn’t want to come down here again anytime soon. I threw open the hatch to find it only had two more terminals inside and a plug that didn’t seem attached to anything. I tried the isolated plug, but my PipBuck didn’t even register as being plugged in, so I moved on to the two remaining terminals. No issues detected for either of them.

Just as I was closing the last hatch I got two messages in quick succession.

TO: Rivet Turner
FROM: DeadBolt Turner
SUBJECT: My Office Now!

TO: Rivet Turner
FROM: Rose Gardens
SUBJECT: Sorry!

I didn’t need to read either of them to know what had happened. Dammit Rose...

“Do you have something you want to say to me? Or are you too scared to do it yourself so you send your girlfriend to ask for time off?” DeadBolt was furious.

“DeadBolt listen I...”

“Shut up!” he interrupted, “You realize that I have almost a hundred ponies to manage everyday? Most of which don’t have the skills to do the job they’re assigned? Not like the Overmare cares, and hey if the Overmare doesn’t care, why should you?” I was quickly realizing this wasn’t just about Rose asking for some time off for me. 

The brown unicorn sat down at his desk and took a hoof through his mane in frustration. “Your one of the few ponies I have that can actually do his job and you're asking for a break? The answer’s no. And tell that bitch of your’s to stay out of my business.”

Now, I was angry. “Hey, you leave Rose out of this! She only came here because I haven't had a day that I didn’t spend all of my time down here in who knows how long.” 

“I don’t care.  If you have a problem you come talk to me, don’t send your bitch.” I think he was intentionally trying to piss me off, and it was working.

I grabbed his barding with my magic and yanked him closer over the desk. “If you call Rose a bitch one more time, I'm going to beat you to death with your own wrench.” 

He shoved me, breaking off my magic. “Fine, I'll be nicer to your-”  *Beep,Beep,Beep* 

He was interrupted by a message on his Pip-Buck. “Oh for Luna’s sake, I don’t have time to deal with this.” He said to himself while reading the message. “Rivet, the Overmare’s locked herself out of her terminal... again. Take the override key and unlock it. You can have the rest of the day off after that. Just get the hell out of my office.” 

He sent me the override key and I left as fast as possible. The Overmare was notoriously bad with computers. She was the only pony in the Stable that managed to lock herself out on an almost weekly basis. It was surprising she even knew how to send a message on her PipBuck.

The Overmare’s office was much nicer than DeadBolt’s. It was bigger, cleaner and had a large U-shaped desk. Piles of various reports were stacked neatly on the desk. The Overmare might not have been good with computers but she was very organized. 

“There you are Rivet. Hurry up and get this infernal machine working.” The Overmare didn’t have a lot of patience when something wasn’t working properly for her. 

“Uh, yes, Right away ma’am.” I scrambled over to the Overmare’s desk to plug my Pip-Buck into the locked terminal. I activated the override key and the terminal began authenticating it.  The process took about a minute, but wasn’t technically difficult.

The Overmare sat on one of the chairs at the other side office. She locked herself out so often that she knew complaining wasn’t going to make it take any less time, but she did seem a bit rushed. The way she tapped her hoof made her look like she was late for something.
DeadBolt had explained to her how her override key worked but she never remembered. Instead she just gave it to DeadBolt so he could take care of any lockouts himself.

The screen finally broke away from the lockout screen and recent messages flooded the screen. Most of them were just maintenance reports and complaints. But one caught my eye.

TO: Stable 12 Overmare’s Office Terminal
FROM: Stable-Tech LP Branch
SUBJECT: Re: Stable Recovery 

What?

I moved the selection down to the message to open it before the Overmare snapped, “Are you almost done yet?” which made me jump a little.

“Oh, umm, yeah, yeah I'm done.” I stammered. I stared down at the terminal for a second before unplugging and stepping away from the terminal. “It’s all ready to go.” 

“Ugh, about time.” She quickly started going through things on the terminal. When I didn’t leave immediately she slowly looked over to me. “ You can go now.” 

“Oh, right, sorry.” I said sheepishly and I rushed out of the office. 

The Overmare had a message from Stable-Tec?. How is that possible? We were always told that Stable 12 was all there was left. Did anypony else know? Maybe DeadBolt did, he was Head of Maintenance; if the Overmare had told anyone it would be him or the Head of Security. 

I swung open the door to DeadBolt’s office to find a very annoyed DeadBolt and an older red unicorn mare. It was Scarlett, the Head of Security. 

“Well, would you look at this. The Turner brothers in the same room, thats a rare sight.” She laughed

DeadBolt gave me a deathly stare. “What the hell are you doing here Rivet. I thought I told you to take the day off after you fixed the Overmare’s terminal.” 

“Um, yeah, its just.” I looked over at the Head of Security. “I'm sorry, Scarlett, but could I talk to my brother in private?”

She looked at me quizzically. “Wow, you actually want to talk to your brother? When did you two start getting along?” She looked over at Deadbolt. “We’ll talk later.” She trotted out and I closed the door behind her.

“What do you want Rivet? I already gave you your precious time off, can’t I just work in piece?” DeadBolt said, annoyed.

“It’s just...I found something on the Overmare’s terminal after I unlocked it. I was wondering if you knew anything about it.”

He waved his hoof in a circle, in a ‘Get on with it’ gesture “And what did you find exactly?” 

“There was a message from Stable-Tec, it was recently sent too.” 

DeadBolt Didn’t share my apprehension. “Okay?”  he said as if it wasn’t a big deal.

“How is that possible?”

He just rolled his eyes. “Have you never thought that there might be other Stables that have lasted as long as 12? ” 

I had never thought of that.

“It’s probably just from a Stable that used to house Stable-Tec employees when it was built. Besides, you know as well as I do, nothing can survive on the surface.”

“You’re, right. I was probably just freaking out over nothing.” I sighed, knowing that talking about it with DeadBolt was clearly not helping.  He was right, it couldn’t have come from the surface, but I still couldn’t shake the feeling that it was weird.

“Yeah, you were. Now if you're done wasting my time.” He motioned towards the door.

I decided to head back to my room. I didn’t have a whole lot to do for the rest of the day. Rose would be working in the orchard until dinner, and I'm pretty sure that if DeadBolt caught me down in the maintenance levels again today he’d kick my flank.

“Well now what?” I said flopping down on my bed. I laid there for a while trying to think of something to pass the time. My mind kept wandering back to the message on the Overmare’s terminal. What DeadBolt said made sense, but what if it really was from the surface?

“Come on Rivet, don’t be ridiculous.” I said staring up at ceiling. “ If it was, I'm sure the Overmare would have told somepony by now...” I was lying to myself. Truth was that the Overmare probably wouldn’t tell anypony if she could avoid it. 

For dinner that night we have, of course, more damn apples. 

“Hey, Rivet are you okay?” Rose asked, noticing that I hadn’t touched my plate.
“Huh? Oh, yeah... I'm fine.” I tried reassuring her and smiled half-heartedly.

“Really? You seem a bit... distracted.” She looked at me with a worried look on her face. “It’s not because I talked to DeadBolt behind your back is it?” She looked away sheepishly as if I was going to scold her.

“What? No, its not that. Really, I’m fine. Actually he did end up giving me the rest of the day off anyway.”

She gave a sigh of relief. “I told you. You just needed to talk to him,” she smiled at me.

He only let me have the day off out of aggravation, rather than actually wanting to, but I’ll let her have this one. Besides I had more important things on my mind. After dinner, I was going to find out what was on that message. 

Over the rest of dinner I formed a plan.  Right after dinner it wouldn’t be late enough to break curfew and the Overmare won’t be in her office for the rest of the night. It would be the perfect time. No one will suspect a maintenance pony going into the Overmare’s office. The Overmare had enough technical problems to make a visit from maintenance a regular occurrence. I would get in, download the message and get out.

“I think I’m gonna turn in early tonight” I said, levitating my tray and getting up to leave.

Rose shot me another worried look. “Are you sure? You haven't eaten anything.”

“Yeah, not really hungry. I'll see you in the morning.” I put my tray away and headed out to the Overmare’s office. 

“Turner!” I jumped as a voice yelled from behind me. I turned to see Scarlett trotting up to me. “Have you seen DeadBolt anywhere?” 

“Uh, sorry... Haven't seen him since this morning.” What was with ponies thinking I knew where my brother was all the time? Everyone knew we didn’t get along so why do they keep asking?

“That’s strange, he usually eats dinner in his office, but he’s not there. Oh well, thanks anyway, Rivet.” She cantered off and disappeared around a corner. 

I heaved a sigh of relief. For a second there, I thought somepony had already found out my plan, even though I had only devised it a matter of minutes ago.

After Scarlett, nopony noticed me making my way to the Overmare’s office. The door to her office was locked of course.  Normally a locked door isn’t a problem for a pony in maintenance, since you’re given access codes for nearly every door or panel in the Stable.  Higher ranking offices and personal areas would normally be an exception, but I still had the Overmare’s override key which would work on the door just as it had her terminal.

I plugged my Pip-Buck into the door’s input port and waited for it do its work. 

*Click*

The door unlocked and slid open. I looked up to find DeadBolt glaring at me from behind the Overmare’s terminal.

“What the hell are you doing in here?” He hissed in a low tone. 

“I could ask you the same thing.” I said in an equally low tone. Looking behind me to make sure no had seen. I moved in quickly and slid the door closed.

“You're here for the message too.” He wasn’t asking, he knew. “I should have known you’d show up.” He unplugged his Pip-Buck from the terminal. “I already downloaded a copy; I'll send it to you. Meet me in my office in an hour.”

He hurried out, leaving me stunned in the Overmare’s office. I left the office, locking it behind me before anypony noticed me. 

*Beep, Beep, Beep*

TO: Rivet Turner
FROM: DeadBolt Turner
SUBJECT: FWD: RE: Stable Recovery
Here are all the messages that were on the terminal.

---Forwarded Message---
TO: Stable 12 Overmare’s office
FROM: Stable-Tech LP Branch
SUBJECT: RE:Stable Recovery
That’s great news. We will be sending a team to help you with the moving process soon. It will take some time to get everything in order, but you should begin preparations. We will send you further notice when the team is on its way. 
There is one more matter I would like to discuss, however. Your Stable is in possession of certain Data Chip is that correct?

---Forwarded Message---
TO: Stable-Tech LP Branch
FROM: Stable 12 Overmare’s office
SUBJECT: RE:Stable Recovery
Yes, that was part of the Stable’s initial equipment. It is safe, don’t worry about that. We can retrieve it once your men have gotten everypony out of the Stable. How long will the moving process take? 
As I’ve mentioned before, most of the ponies think that the surface is still uninhabitable, so I’m a little concerned about this transition. I’m not sure how many will be willing to leave with almost no notice. 

---Forwarded Message---
TO: Stable 12 Overmare’s office
FROM: Stable-Tech LP Branch
SUBJECT: RE:Stable Recovery
Good to hear. That chip is very important. Don’t worry about the transition, I'm sure everypony will be ready to get out to the surface as soon possible. My team should be arriving sometime in the next few days.

---Forwarded Message---
TO: Stable 12 Overmare’s office
FROM: Stable-Tech LP Branch
SUBJECT: RE:Stable Recovery
My men will arrive tomorrow morning.  You should inform the rest of Stable 12 of the transition plans.  It would be advisable that they stay in their domiciles while we begin the moving process.  We will fetch each group as we become ready for them. We look forward to meeting you, Miss Overmare, as well as the rest of the inhabitants of Stable 12.

“I guess you were right.” DeadBolt sounded as surprised as he was annoyed.  It wasn’t often that I was right about something.  “The last message was sent just a few hours ago.”

“DeadBolt, do you understand what this means? It means-”

“It means we can leave the stable.” He cut me off. “What's this about a data chip though? I don't have anything about it on my records.”

I waved him off. “Who cares? We’re leaving the Stable! Let the Overmare take care of it. I got to go tell Rose about this!” 

I turned to go and rushed towards the door. An amber glow encompassed the door as DeadBolt held it closed with his magic. “No.” 

I turned around, confused. “What do you mean no?” 

“You go blabbing your mouth about this before the Overmare announces it herself and everypony will know you broke into her office and looked at her privates messages. That’s still a crime and if you get caught, I’m sure you’d drag me into it somehow. You’ll tell nopony. Everypony else will find out in the morning.”

“I suppose you’re right.” I huffed, forcing the door open with my own magic and leaving for my room.

He was right. It may not really matter anymore, but there would still be the chance that we would get punished for breaking into the Overmare’s office. It would be better not to tell anypony.

Needless to say, I didn’t get a lot of sleep that night. I was up all night thinking about what the surface must be like. If it’s not a radiated wasteland then what could it be? We had old pictures of the surface down in the school but they were so old you could hardly tell what was on them anymore. 

*Beep, beep, beep*

I must have fallen asleep at some point, because I was once again awoken by the familiar sound of my Pip-Buck beeping at me.

TO: Rivet Turner
FROM: DeadBolt Turner
SUBJECT: Atrium lights
Apparently some foals were playing around last night and broke one of the lights in the atrium. There are spares in the supply closet on that floor.  Take care of it, and when you're done come to my office.

Seriously? We both knew we would be leaving today but he still had to make me work? Maybe he was just trying to make it look like a regular day or maybe he just really liked making me work.

“Ugh...” I groaned and began getting ready. Even today, I was not a morning pony. 

On my way to the atrium the speakers in the halls burst with static then cleared to the Overmare’s voice.

“Attention Stable 12, I have very important news. I have been in contact with Stable-Tech over the last few weeks. The surface is safe again. They have sent a team to help us prepare to move out of the stable and into our new homes on the surface. They should be here within the hour. If you're not currently on duty, stay in your rooms until the Stable-Tech team can assist you. That is all”

The Overmare certainly didn't mince words. The ponies in the hall were stunned silent. I had expected to hear a roar of joy when that announcement got made, but I guess the news was more of a shock than anything. The two security mares that were doing the morning patrols stopped and started whispering to each other. A few foals that had gotten up early to play rushed by me and back to their parents. As for me, I still had a light to fix. Not that it would take more than a few minutes. 

As I was screwing the cover for the light back on, I heard Rose calling me from down the hall. 

“Rivet, there you are! Can you believe it? We’re actually leaving the Stable!” She was nearly bouncing with excitement. When she noticed what I was doing, her excitement turned to annoyance. “Wait. Does DeadBolt seriously have you working right now?

“Yeah, he does.” I murmured dismissively. “And I don’t really believe it. It all seems crazy.” I was as excited as she was but it was still shocking. Until yesterday I had expected to live my entire life down here and now we were leaving.

“I'm gonna go to my room and get ready. Am I going to see you before we leave?” 

“DeadBolt said he wanted to talk to me after I fixed the light, but I'll stop by your room after that.” 

She gave me a warm smile. “Good, I'll see you in a bit then.” She trotted off to start packing.

I finished putting on the light cover then headed down to the Maintenance Head’s office. DeadBolt was still working when I walked in. 

“About time.” He grumbled as I entered. “You should delete those messages off your Pip-Buck” His tone was flat. He was the only pony I had seen today that wasn’t excited yet.

“Is that seriously all you called me down here for? And why are you still so damn glum? Cheer up, we’re leaving!” 

“I'll be excited when we get to the surface. Until then, its business as usual.” DeadBolt hadn’t bothered to so much as look away from his terminal to talk to me. “Now delete those messages. I would rather not have anypony find out about that business, even after we get to the surface.”

I rolled my eyes and proceeded to delete the messages. “There are you happy? They’re gone. Can I go now?”

Before he could answer we heard a loud metallic screech ring pierced through the Stable. It took me a moment to realize what it could have been. The door just opened, the Stable was actually open. 

“I’ll see you on the surface, DeadBolt. I’m going to see Rose before we all get out of here.”

My brother sat back in his chair and glanced at the ceiling. “Fine with me, go see your mare. I’ll see you later, little brother.” DeadBolt sounded strange, almost nice. I think he was just as excited as everyone else but didn’t want to show it.

I had gotten to the stair leading to the atrium when I heard a strange noise. Several loud cracks that echoed through the halls. It took me a second to realize what the sound was. You didn’t hear it a lot in Stable 12, usually only when the new recruits were being trained for security detail.

“Gunshots?” Why the hell were there gunshots? I turned on a feature of my PipBuck that I didn’t use very often, The Eyes Forward Sparkle.  It was typically only used by security, and gave a visual display of lifeforms nearby.

Instantly I saw a flood of white and red bars. Red bars indicated bodies with neural activity that suggested hostility towards the user.  My mind was racing, and I noticed the white bars were slowly disappearing, one by one. What the hell was going on? 

I galloped upstairs and the gunshots growing louder. The sound of screaming ponies accompanied the shots. I almost reached the atrium when I heard a voice that couldn’t have been anyone in the Stable. 

“Heheheh, these Stable bitches die good.” The voice sounded like he had eaten sandpaper. 

“Yeah, but the suit didn’t say there would be security to shoot back at us.” Came another voice. This one was arguably female but with the same sandpaper quality of the first one.

“Just makes it more fun.” Said the first voice again.

I peered around the corner to where the two ponies were standing. One was a dark brown stallion with a knife cutie mark and a matching knife strapped to his side. The other was a yellow mare.  She had what looked like a metal pineapple for a cutie mark. They were decorated in large pieces of rubber and bones. They were greasy and covered in dirt; it looked like neither of them had bathed in years. Who the hell were these ponies?

“Hey! There’s another one!” The mare yelled and they ran off down the opposite hall. 

“I got to find Rose” I said to myself shakily. 

I started down the hall, but stopped almost immediately at the sight of a pony I knew. Or used to know. Now she laid in front of me, her body torn to pieces and her blood splattered over the walls. It was a green unicorn mare who worked in security. I remembered her name was Jade. I never knew her last name.

My stomach convulsed at the sight. “Sweet Celestia...” I said as I wiped the vomit from my mouth. I noticed the blood wasn’t just splattered, it was smeared over the walls, as if it was done intentionally. I didn’t know Jade very well but she didn’t deserve that. Nopony deserved that. I tried to put the dismembered pony out of my mind. I had to find Rose, I had to make sure she was okay. 

The hall Rose lived in was covered in blood. There was a body of a filly in the middle of the hall. There was a gaping hole in the back of her head. I slowly made my way down the hall, watching for the ponies responsible, and also trying to avoid stepping in too much blood. There wasn’t any of the attacking ponies as far as i could see. 

My EFS caught two more lights as I approached Roses room. One was white, the other red. Both coming from Rose’s room.

“Help! Somepony!” I heard Rose screaming from behind her door.

“Shut up, slut! Nopony’s coming.”

Before I realized what I was planning to do, I looked around for a possible weapon. There was a yellow medical kit on the wall, it was the closest thing that would be hard enough to hurt anypony. 

Swinging the door open, I heard the Stallion grunting and saw him wrestling around. Rose was pinned under him screaming. He had a revolver gripped in his mouth, pointed at her head.  I slammed the metal case into his head as hard as I could.  It connected with a sickening wack! He dropped the gun and fell off Rose. 

My head started spinning and my vision was both crystal clear and totally dark.  I felt myself doing things but I wasn’t thinking at all.

*BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG CLICK CLICK CLICK* 

I was shaking when I regained my awareness.  I had unloaded the weapon into the pony’s head.  Brains and fragments of bone shot out of the pony’s skull and blood covered the back wall of Rose’s room.  

Rose had curled up in the opposite corner of the room. She was sobbing uncontrollably. I dropped the gun, which landed with a thud, and ran to hold her. She buried her head in my chest crying. I looked down. Her barding was ripped off her hind legs and there was blood between them. 

“It’s okay, it’s okay...” I took my hoof through her mane and tried to think of something to say to calm her down, “I’m here now...” I looked over at the pony I just murdered. After what that bastard had done to Rose, I felt no remorse for killing him.

*Beep Beep Beep* My Pip-Buck’s message alarm

TO: Rivet Turner
FROM: DeadBolt Turner
SUBJECT: Where are you?
Rivet, are you okay? Me, Scarlett and a few others are barricaded down in maintenance B, near the emergency stairs. Get down to maintenance, if you can.

I messaged him back right away.

TO: Deadbolt Turner
FROM: Rivet Turner
SUBJECT: RE: Where are you?
I'm fine. I'm with Rose right now. None of them near us at the moment. If I can get Rose to move I’ll try to get down to you guys as soon as I can. I have one of their guns and it looks like he had more ammo on him. 

TO: Rivet Turner
FROM: DeadBolt Turner
SUBJECT: Re: Where are you?
Sweet Celestia. Be careful Rivet.

I closed the message. Rose’s crying was slowing but she didn’t seem like she was in any shape to move.

“Rose, listen to me. We need to get down to maintenance, DeadBolt and some others are down there.” 

She slowly looked up at me, tears were still streaming down her face. 

“Do you think you can move?”

She shakily nodded, not saying a word. I slowly moved her off of me and walked over to the dead pony. I picked the gun back up and searched him for some more ammo. He had enough to fill the revolver plus three extra shots, nine total. I had never shot a gun before today, not sure if I could hit anything if I didn’t have it pressed against the target. I helped Rose to her hooves and we started to make our way down the hall to the atrium. 

Rose didn’t make a sound as we passed by the dead filly in the hall. I could only imagine what else was inside each of these rooms. 

Two red lights popped up on the E.F.S. They were around the corner; we had to go through them to get to the stairwell. I peered around the corner, neither of the ponies were looking this way. I turned the corner and activated SATS, Stable-Tec Arcane Targeting Spell. I had only used SATS once before when killing some Rad Roaches that made their way into lower levels.

Time slowed to a crawl. SATS was a targeting spell. It slowed time relative to the user, giving you time to aim your shots very precisely. Each shot that you aim uses a portion of the SATS’s charge, which recharges after some time.

Two shots into the farther one, one for the closer pony. All aimed for their heads. Three shots was all I had charge for. 

*BANG*

The first shot missed.  SATS helped you aim, but accuracy was still up to the user.

*BANG*

The second one hit home, sending the disgusting pony’s brains out the other side of his head.

*BANG* 

The last shot skimmed harmlessly off the other ponies cobbled-together armor.

Time began returning to normal speed.  The pony didn’t miss a beat after seeing his comrade shot in front of him.  He reeled around and readied a strange gun. It was larger than any that I had seen before. He fired it, sending a blast of pellets at me.

“Agh” I spun back around the corner, a few pellets had made it into my foreleg. My utility barding had absorbed much of the force of the shot, so it wasn’t a terrible wound, but damn did it hurt. 

“Come on out! Maybe if you surrender, I'll only kill ya.” He laughed as he approached, firing off a second shot into the wall. 

I levitated the revolver around the corner and fired blindly.

*BANG Clang* “Fuck!” the pony was surprised by the ricochet, but unharmed.

SATS had recharged enough for one more shot.  While he was still distracted I turned and popped into SATS. One shot, make it count, Rivet.

*BANG*

I opened a hole in his head. SATS was a terrifying spell. It allowed for someone as inexperienced with guns as me to land shots that could maim or kill.

I filled the revolver with the rest of the ammo I had. Four shots left with it. I picked up the gun the other pony had. My Pip-Buck registered it as a shotgun. Just looking at it I could tell it was not a well maintained weapon. Lucky for me, if it was in better condition the shot I took might have been pretty bad. It hurt but it didn’t need immediate attention. I didn’t even think to bring the medical kit with me. 

Rose was staring at my bleeding leg.

“It’ll be okay Rose.”

We finally made it to the stairwell down to maintenance when I heard another voice. This one was different from the others. It didn’t have the insanity or the sandpaper-like qualities the other had. Three red lights showed up on the EFS

“What is taking so long? We should have been in and out by now. Avarice is going to be very displeased.” 

“Avarice is going to just fine.” replied a second voice. This one sounded like it was coming from inside a bucket.

I checked the corner. I saw all three of them. Two of them looked like robots. They were covered head-to-hoof in armor and toted some rather large weapons attached on their sides. The third was... what the hell? He was a pegasus. I had never seen a pegasus before, there were none in Stable 12. He had a teal-blue coat and his combed back hair was white and feathery. He was wearing a dark blue suit. I couldn’t see any of their cutie marks. 

“Have you located the Overmare yet? We need her override key to get to the chip.” The pegasus asked his flunkies. 

“I think the raiders are having their fun with her right now.” said one of the robot ponies.

My stomach turned imagining what could be happening to her.

“Well bring me her Pip-Buck. I don't care if it’s still attached to her. We need that code.” The pony was completely cold and unenthused. “Avarice said the data chip was on the bottom floor, hidden in a maintenance hatch. Are those ponies still giving us trouble down there?” 

My mind began racing.  Were these ponies only after some chip?  Something hidden in a maintenance hatch?

“They’ve barricaded a small section of the lower levels off. We can't blow through it, could bring the whole place down on us, but they shouldn’t be a problem.” responded the second robot pony

That would be DeadBolt and the others.  I hoped I could get to them before these ponies did.

The pegasus straightened up at that. “Fine, if they’re not a problem, ignore them. Get me that damn chip.  Now go hurry things up with the Overmare, I’m going to check back with the guards at the entrance.”

At least these ponies weren’t in our way yet, we could still get to maintenance another way. It was a good thing, since there was no way that either of my guns could punch through that armor.  The shotgun couldn’t effectively shoot through a thick cloth. I backed up to where Rose was waiting for me and we headed around to the other stairwell to maintenance. 

The lobby at the front of Maintenance B was littered with corpses of both attackers and stable ponies. Most of the Stable probably fled down this way. Rose and I crept around looking for signs of life.  There was nothing in the front half of the floor. We snuck down the hall to the second half of the floor.  At the end of the hall was another lobby, this one was occupied. There were a few lights on my EFS but they weren’t moving around. I could hear them laughing about something.

“Haha, we should have tried mercenary work a long time ago! We get to kill dumbass Stable ponies and get paid for it.” Inside I could see three ponies. One of them had a needle in his leg and looked like he was enjoying the painkillers that they had found. Another one was eating what looked like a Radroach. The last one was carving up a freshly murdered earth pony. 

I could probably take the two lucid ponies. The third one I didn’t need to worry about just yet. I checked my revolver again. Four shots. The shotgun had five shells loaded in, but I was still questioning its capabilities. My leg was still hurting but it was far from fatal. I breathed deep and readied the revolver.

I activated SATS. 

*BANG, BANG*

The first pony took two shots in the back and dropped. 

The other pony was quick to react and pulled out a pistol and started unloading in my direction. I reacted by firing off my remaining revolver rounds and ducking back out of the room.

*BANG BANG click click click*

“Heheheh, I know what that sound means.” He chimed. The other pony had heard the clicking from my revolver as I tried to fire off more rounds than it had left

The unsuspecting pony spun through the doorway to see the shotgun, point blank to his head.

*BANG*

The shower of bullets blew his head off, leaving a blood spurting stump in its place. I was not prepared for this, and received a shower of blood. The body dropped, spasming on the floor for a few seconds before stopping. The shotgun was clearly more effective at close range.

Inside the last pony was still laying there nearly motionless, eyes glossed over. I put the gun up to head, but stood a few feet back. I hesitated to pull the trigger. He may have been one of the monsters attacking us but he was defenceless. I doubt he even knew I was still there. He wasn’t going to be hurting anyone anytime soon, maybe I could just tie him up. I looked back to see Rose standing in the doorway. 

*BANG*

I had ditched the revolver. It may have been a nice weapon but without ammo it was useless. I took the pistol from the headless pony and what little extra ammo he had, fourteen rounds total.  Rooting through bodies wasn’t fun. Especially headless ones. My stomach was turning the entire time but I managed to keep myself from vomiting again. 

Past the lobby was a hallway to the back of Maintenance B.  I peered down the hall and four white lines appeared on the EFS. Further down the hall we came to a barricade of metal desks and storage crates. Behind them I could see a levitating pistol and a dark red mare.

Scarlett gave a sigh of relief “Rivet, Rose, thank Celestia you two are alright! Quick get in here.” A familiar amber glow surrounded part of the barricade and made an opening, closing it behind us after we were through.

DeadBolt glanced at Rose before approaching me. “How is she?”

“She hasn’t said anything since I found her,” I muttered, “She’s stopped crying but I'm not entirely sure that’s a good thing.” I was worried about Rose. She had been following me silently watching me fight and kill other ponies just minutes after one had his way with her. 

DeadBolt looked down and saw the blood on my leg. “You’ve been shot.” He said. He turned and opened a medical kit they had. He pulled out some of the magical bandages it was stocked with. “Here, wrap it with this.” 

I bandaged the leg. It had started hurting more sense we got down to maintenance. The healing bandages would at least close the wound. It still hurt to walk on it but it would at least not get any worse now.

There were two earth ponies barricaded here with us. I recognized one as Lily, she worked in maintenance, I think she was a Pip-Buck technician. The other was a security pony named Nightwatch. 

“We need to get out of here.” Nightwatch said to DeadBolt.  It was clear he was anxious to leave.

“Right,” DeadBolt responded, “No time to waste.”

“Not yet.” I said.

DeadBolt shot me a confused look. “Why the hell not?”

“I overheard some of them talking upstairs. I think it was the pony in charge. They said they were looking for a data chip.” I explained.

“Some chip?” Nightwatch steamed. “If that’s what all this is about, let’s just give it to them and let this all be over!”

“If that’s really all they’re here for, and if they’re willing to kill this many ponies for it, it has to be important.” Scarlett interjected.

“Thats what I was thinking. If we’re getting out of here we need to grab that chip first.” I said.

“What sort of data could they possibly want?” DeadBolt asked. “What use could Stable records be for somepony on the surface?”

“I don’t know.  All I know is that it’s hidden here in Maintenance, and I’m pretty sure I know where.” DeadBolt’s eyes shot at me.  I could tell he wanted more explanation, especially how I knew more about this chip than he did, but there wasn’t time. “Even if I’m right, though, there are ponies guarding the way to the Stable door, and we’ll never be able to overpower them.”

“There is one other way out.” DeadBolt said, comfortable now that he knew things I didn’t. “The Overmare’s office has an emergency escape tunnel that leads right to the door. We both have her override key, so all we need to do is get to her office.”

“You all should head there now.  I’ll go find the chip.  If it’s not where I think it is, I won’t waste time catching up to you, so don’t wait up.”  There was a good chance I was wrong, and also a good chance I wouldn’t make it to the Overmare’s office.

Nightwatch stepped closer to me. “No one should go alone, you’ll stand a better chance if you have backup. I'm coming with you.” 

I felt a slight tugging on my barding and looked to see Rose. “Rose you go with DeadBolt. I’ll meet you guys up there.”

She slowly shook her head and pulled my barding harder

I gave her a nod. “Right, Rose is coming with me.” I said turning back to the others. 

“What if the emergency tunnel doesn’t work?” Lily asked. “What do we do then?” 

DeadBolt looked a little annoyed at that. “Then we all lay down and die.” 

Lily was clearly not so keen on plan B. “Okay, what if we find more of those insane ponies on our way to the Overmare’s office?”

I levitated the shotgun over to her. “Here, take this. Make sure they’re close when you fire, but watch for the spray...” Her face twisted as she noticed the gore I was wearing. “It’s only got a few shots left so be sure you’ll hit before firing.” 

She hesitated for a second before taking the weapon.

“Okay you three go down and get the chip. Scarlett, Lily and I will head up and get that tunnel open.” DeadBolt said before scouting past the barricade. Nopony had made their way down yet; we still had time to get moving before anymore got here. “Lets get moving.”

Nightwatch took the lead. The barricade wasn’t far from the stairs down to level C. As we approached the bottom of the stairs he stopped us. 

He mouthed the word “four” and shook his head in their direction. My EFS hadn’t picked them up yet. He grabbed his gun with his mouth and got ready to ambush them. I readied my pistol. 

“Didn’t that feathered prick say that thing was down here? All I see is a bunch of these damn computers.” One of the attacker ponies complained

“Its got to be around here somewhere. Just keep lookin’.” Another answered

Nightwatch turned to me and whispered. “3...2...1...go!” 

He turned the corner and fired at the closest of them. Nightwatch put two rounds into the pony. one in his leg the other in his chest. He dropped.

I moved out and open fired on the next closest. Three shots, none of them made contact.

The element of surprise didn’t last long. By the time I had fired my first volley the three left standing had all drawn weapons and were starting to return fire. One of them was holding a shotgun, it was clearly in much better condition than the one I gave to Lily. 

We moved to the top of the stairs to get a better position against them. Shotgun pony tried to rush us at the top but Nightwatch sent a few bullets through his chest before he could make it up. 

I heard one yell, “Die, you Stable-dwelling fucks!” as she tossed something up the stairs. 

A small metal apple landed between us at the top of the stairs. Nightwatch pushed us back and galloped forward to grab the apple. He started to throw it back down the stairs when

*BOOM*

Nightwatch exploded in a shower of red mist and fire. The blast knocked me over; a piece of shrapnel flew into my ear and out the other side. All I could hear was ringing in my head. Rose was on the ground holding her head. 

I couldn’t hear the two ponies approaching up the stairs. The first one made it to top and looked my way with a smile. I scrambled to grab my pistol off the floor and flew into SATS. 

*BANG,BANG,BANG,BANG.*

The first one dropped dead on the floor. The second one backed up against the wall of the stairs.  I could just make what she yelled. “Take this you little fuck!”

Another metal apple thing flew out from around the corner. I grabbed it my my magic and tossed it back down the stairs before it landed. 

“Oh fu” *BOOM*

My head fell back and I laid there for a few seconds trying to catch my breath.

I helped Rose to her hooves. There was blood running down her face. She didn’t say a word, she just stared at the black and red stain where Nightwatch used to be. He died saving us, the least I could do for him now was make sure we got out of here alive. 

They had been searching through the hatches down here. Most of them had been broken open. I opened the last hatch and found the isolated plug I had seen yesterday. 

“I hope this works.” I plugged my Pipbuck in and ran the override code. Something called, “Stable Recovery protocol” popped up on my pipbuck. I ran the program.

I heard a hissing sound then saw a panel on the inside of the hatch slide open. A small computer chip presented itself. This was what that pegasus upstairs wanted. Why the entire stable had been slaughtered. This tiny, little chip.

I took a closer look and found that it was compatible with my Pipbuck. I pluged it in and it registered as “Y34RK” but otherwise showed no other data.

I turned back to Rose. “Okay time to go.” She gave me a silent nod and we started heading back up to the Overmare’s office.

We were still one floor down when more red lights showed up. We ducked into what had been a family’s room. A blue earth pony stallion was in the corner of the room, he had multiple bullet holes in him. A white unicorn mare was splayed out in the middle of the floor. She had a hole in her head and her legs were covered in blood. A teal unicorn foal had large gashes cut into it. If I had anything in my stomach I would have vomited. 

“Dammit, These raiders are useless.” I recognised the voice. It was that pegasus. “I give them a single simple task and they can't even do that right.” 

I could hear the metal clang of his two armored guards as they trotted slowly behind him. As they passed I could see one of them was holding a bloody Pip-Buck. They had the Overmare’s Pip-Buck. That meant they also had her codes. Soon they would get down to maintenance C and find the chip gone. I want to be out of here before that happens.

Rose’s eyes were fixed on the corpse of the unicorn mare in the center of room. 

“Rose, we need to go.” She wouldn't look away. She didn’t even acknowledge that she heard me. “Rose, come on.” I reached out to put my hoof on her shoulder.

She jumped and scrambled against the wall. The look in her eyes. She looked at me like I was going to kill her, like I was one of the monsters attacking the stable. 

“Rose, it’s just me.” Her breathing was erratic. She was shaking. She had been doing so well, but the sight of another raped mare had shaken her.

“Please, we need to go. The others are waiting for us.” I knew I wasn’t being as gentle as I should have been, but we needed to be quick. 

Slowly she started to come back to her senses. She was still shaking but she had managed to control her breathing a bit better. She still didn’t talk. Celestia, I wish she would just say something. 

“You think you can move again?” 

She gave me a slow nod. It wasn’t what I was hoping for but it'll have to do for now.

The way back upstairs was relatively empty. There were a few red lights but they weren’t in our way and we easily avoided them. We were almost at the Overmare’s office when my EFS finally registered three white lines. Thank Celestia, the others were alight. 

“Guys, Rivet’s coming.” I heard Lily call. Quickly followed by Scarlet scolding her to be quiet. When we entered the office I could see DeadBolt working on something behind the desk. Scarlett and Lily were keeping watch and welcomed us as I closed the office door behind me.

“Where’s Nightwatch?” Scarlett said in a tone that told me she knew.

“We ran into some of the attackers when getting to the chip. He... didn’t make it, but if it wasn’t for him we’d be dead too.” I decided to leave out the details. Nightwatch worked for Scarlett. I don’t know how close they were, but I'm sure she didn’t want to hear about anypony exploding. “What's Deadbolt doing back there?” 

“The damn circuit connecting the terminal to the hydraulics is fucked. I'm trying to find a way to connect my Pip-Buck to it instead.” He said from behind the desk

“Will that work?” Lily asked, worried.

“Hell if I know, but its our best chance right now.” He said bluntly.

Scarlett noticed it first. Her ears perked up at the sound. A metallic clanging coming from down the hall. A red light popped up on my EFS. 

“What the hell is that?” Scarlett asked exasperatedly.  She raised her pistol towards the closed door and motioned for Rose to hide behind the Overmare’s desk. Lily took the left side of the room, and I the right, while Rose crouched behind a filing cabinet turned sideways in front of the desk.

“DeadBolt you need to hurry!”  

“I'm working as fast as I can, dammit.” 

The metallic thudding was getting louder. Soon enough one of those robot ponies was going to come through that door, and a rusty shotgun and two small pistols isn't going to do a lot against that thing. 

A few dreadful seconds of louder and louder clanging passed before the door finally slid open.  Standing in the doorway was one of the robot ponies. He took a glance around the room, at me, Lily, and Scarlett standing there aiming our shambled weaponry at him.

*BANG*

The first shot came from Lily. She fired the shotgun at point blank range. Sparks and smoke exploded away from the pony’s head and cleared after a second.  The shot had barely scratched the armor. 

The metal pony made a small turn towards Lily and the two massive barrels mounted on his sides started to spin with a loud whirring sound. Nopony was prepared for what happened next. A second later the weapons began firing.  It was like nothing I could have imagined. The flashes and noises simply didn’t stop. It was as if the pony was firing a thousand guns a second, but he stood there still as if merely surveying the room.  Within seconds the massive guns had torn to shreds Lily’s barding and ripped her body apart leaving only a bloody, bullet ridden corpse.  Blood and gore were plastered over the walls and floor behind her, but only when her lifeless remains crumpled to the floor did the pony finally relent.

“I got it!” DeadBolt yelled from behind the desk, as loud mechanical sounds echoed from the floor and the desk started to slide back to reveal the hidden passage. “Lets go!”

The robot pony turned to me. Both of its massive guns were pointed at me. I froze. The terrifying machines started to spin again. I was going to die.

I felt a shove a moment before the roar of the guns began again. I felt a searing pain as one of the rounds cleaved a gash through my leg, but I was relatively unharmed. Scarlett wasn’t so lucky. The massive guns repeated there monstrous work, tearing Scarlett apart. I would have stood there mesmerized by the horrible sight if DeadBolt hadn’t dragged me into the tunnel. 

DeadBolt quickly closed the tunnel before the metal monster could enter. I was dragged to my hooves by Deadbolt. “Come on, we can mourn them later. We aren’t out yet.” 

I looked over at Rose. I could tell she was trying not to think about what had just happened, how close I just came to being torn into pieces like Scarlett and Lily. That was the second time somepony else died trying to save me.  I swallowed a pang of guilt and turned to continue.

We were in a hallway. It didn’t look any different than the rest of the stable, greyish green metal walls with buzzing lights over head. Except this hallway wasn’t blood soaked and didn’t have the bodies of the ponies I grew up with in it. The end was another sealed door. This one was opened easily with the panel next to it. 

It opened up to the side of the main Stable entrance; we were mere feet from the doors to the outside. There was nopony here, no lights yet either. It was just like it always was, except after walking out to the center of the room, we could see that the large gear-shaped door was actually open. Outside I could see a light at the end of a dark tunnel.  Without stepping outside I was seeing things I had never seen before.  We all paused for a moment realizing that this was the exit. We were about to walk right out of the Stable.  

We stepped out of the door into a cave. Old skeletons of ponies who had been locked out of the Stable when it was first sealed laid scattered through the cave. They were almost untouched except for the few shattered bones that had been broken by the ponies who had taken the stable over. 

A near deafening metal screech snapped me out of my daze. 

“What are you doing?” 

DeadBolt stepped away from the controls for the door. “It won't be much, but closing this will give us a headstart, now lets go.” 

We all turned to the exit of the cave. Stable 12 was lost and with it everything we knew. With only a pistol with seven shots, a data chip called Y34RK, my bestfriend, and my brother, I took my first steps out into the world.

Footnote: Level up. New perk : Gun Nut: You have become more efficient with small firearms. +5 to small guns and repair. 

> Chapter 2: MareField
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	We stepped out of the cave to the sight of a wasteland. The ground was barren and grey and seemed to extend forever. A few dead trees were scattered around the hewn and unforgiving landscape. As we stepped out we all froze at the sight of the sky or the clouds in the sky. It was dizzying, I felt as if I could fall into the air. 

“Come on you two, we need to move.” Deadbolt snapped. He was right, we were still in danger. 

We galloped as fast as we could out into the wasteland. Behind us we could hear the sound of the Stable doors opening again. I was surprised when I didn’t hear the sounds of gunfire soon after. I took a glance back and could see one of the robot ponies standing at the exit of the cave, but he wasn’t following us. He wasn’t even looking at us. He was looking back into the cave.

I found a nearby ditch and dropped in. 

“What the hell are you doing?” Deadbolt said as he stopped.

“Hold on, their not following us.” I said poking my head up to get a look at the armored machine.

Rose and Deadbolt dropped into the ditch and watched as well. The other robot pony soon emerged along with the suited pegasus. He was furious, I couldn’t make out what he was saying but it was clear that his lackeys were getting an ear full. The pegasus flew off in the other direction and the other ponies followed him. 

“Why aren’t they following us? That one definitely saw us.” I whispered regardless of the fact there was no way they could hear us.

“Who cares? Let’s just get out of here while we can.” Deadbolt said standing up. 

“Where do we go?”

He sighed in annoyance. “I don’t know. I just want to put as much distance between me and that Stable as possible.” and he started off. 

We spend the rest of the day walking. We didn’t have a plan, we didn’t have a destination, didn’t have anything anymore. Rose followed us silently, I had to turn back to make sure she was still there a few times. My leg was still burning all day from where the robot ponies monstrous weapon had glanced me.

It was starting to get darker. We decided to hold up in a small ramshackle hut we found. The inside was trashed. If anypony had been here they left in a hurry. There was still food sitting on the table. Of course, more apples. Not the nice bright red or green apples we had in 12. They were dull and nearly tasteless. I didn’t think I could ever miss Stable 12’s apples. 

As I bit into one my Pip-Buck started clicking. The geiger counter on it had activated, it wasn’t a lot of radiation but it did make me hesitate. I had been exposed to higher levels of radiation when working on the Stable’s magical generators. I ate them regardless of the radiation. I hadn’t eaten properly in over a day. Rose slowly ate hers as well. 

Deadbolt has found a small safe below the bed. After examining it for awhile he finally turned back to us.

“I might be able to get that safe open.” He said and started looking around for something to pick the lock. 

Rose and I watched as he found a screwdriver and a bobby pin and went to work. After a minute or two of fussing around the lock popped open with a satisfying click.

“Where did you learn how to do that?” I asked, I had never seen him pick a lock before; he usually had some kind of access code for anything that would have been locked in the stable.

He didn’t answer, instead he pulled out the contents of the safe. Inside were a few bullets that didn’t fit the pistol I had and some bottle caps. 

“Why the hell would somepony keep bottle caps in a safe?” Deadbolt asked of nopony in particular.

“Maybe they collected them?” 

He shot me an aggravated and confused look “Who the hell collects bottle caps?” 

I shrugged; it sounded as good an explanation as any to me. 

We let Rose take the bed, though I'm not sure anypony should have been laying on it. It was stained brown and yellow and didn’t really look comfortable. DeadBolt and I laid on opposite sides of the room. He was by the door and I was against the back wall. 

I didn’t sleep well normally, but that night I couldn’t sleep at all. Between the burning in my leg and thoughts of what had happened today, I was wide awake. I had never killed anypony before today. I had only ever fought with DeadBolt, and that rarely turned violent. How many did I kill today? The pony in Rose’s room, the two in the hall, three more on the lower levels and and two more down in maintenance C and by extension Nightwatch and Scarlett. Ten ponies, I had taken the life of ten ponies in one day. 

Rose had seen me kill them all, I wonder what she thinks of me now. She still hasn’t said a word. DeadBolt probably would have done the same thing, but still I couldn’t stop thinking about it. 

I ejected Y34RK from my Pip-Buck and studied it. Why did that pegasus want this? He had to know we took it. Why didn’t he chace us?

“Is that it?” DeadBolt whispered from across the room. I didn’t notice that he was awake too. 

“Yeah, this is it.” Everything that happened today was because of this. 

“You should get rid of it.”  I looked over at him, his brow was low as he glared at the chip. 

“Don’t you want to find out what it is first?” I asked him. I was curious about it, I wanted know what was so important that somepony was willing to slaughter a stable for it.

“I don’t care what it is.” His voice was starting to raise.

I snapped Y34RK back into my Pip-Buck. “I'll get rid of it once I know what it is.”

He took a deep breath to calm himself. “Fine.” With that he turned over and went back to sleep. 

I was stiff when I woke up. The wooden floor of the shack wasn’t the most comfortable thing in the world, but I supposed it beat sleeping outside. We spend the morning making sure we hadn’t missed anything in the shack. We found some more irradiated fruit and Deadbolt found a few more bobby pins. 

“Where do you think we should go?” I asked looking out at grey wastes before us. 

Deadbolt pointed over to an old road, it was broken apart, parts of it missing completely. “I figure we follow that, it’s got to lead somewhere.” He said and we started down the road. 

We followed the road for a few hours before we encountered anything. My leg had started hurting more sense last night and the lack of breaks wasn’t helping it. Finally we heard someone yelling from over a hill. 

“Come on! Get a move on!” The voice was angry and gruff.

We approached the top of the hill and saw a small group of ponies. Four of them looked like the ones that attacked the Stable. Two of them had guns, another had a large knife that was flat on the end and the last wielded a pool cue. In between the four rubber and bone clad ponies were a yellow and white earth pony mare and a blue unicorn stallion. The two ponies in the center had chains around their legs and looked like they had been beaten. The stallion looked like he had it a lot worse. His eye was swelled enough for us to notice from on top of the hill and he was walking with a limp. 

I brought up the EFS and it registered the two in the center as neutral, all the others were red. 

“We’ve got to help them.” 

Deadbolt looked at me like I was mad. “Are you crazy? We should keep moving, they won’t notice us.” 

I checked my pistol. Seven shots, I could probably take out one of the ponies with a gun before they noticed us but we might be in trouble after that. I slammed the clip back into the pistol. 

“Fine, you go. I'm helping them.” 

He grabbed me by the leg. “Rivet, they’re not our problem. We need to worry about us.”

I shoved him off. “Then worry about yourself.” 

Before he could respond I had started to move closer to get a better shot. There was a few dead bushes between us and the other ponies. They weren’t great cover but they let me get up closer without them noticing me. I slid into SATS. 

*BANG, BANG, BANG* 

I put three shots into the first pony with a gun. His partners were stunned for a second when he dropped. 

*BANG* 

I got a glancing hit on the second one with a gun. They finally spotted me, the one with the knife running at me like a madpony. 

The captured stallion wasted no time in trying to get back at the ponies who had beaten him. He threw the chains on his fore hoofs around the other gun pony's neck and started to pull.

Pool cue turned and started beating him relentlessly, but the stallion didn’t let go.

Knife pony dashed up the hill at an alarming rate. 

*BANG, BANG* 

He managed to dodge both shots, or rather he moved so erratically that I missed. He was nearly on top of me when DeadBolt tackled him and started wrestling the knife away from him. They rolled down the hill trading blows. Deadbolt grabbed the knife from the pony and swung. A splash of red covered the ground near them and I heard what sounded like gargling coming from the pony. 

The blue stallion had managed to choke the other pony with a gun to death before the pony with the pool cue had beat him into submission, he just kept beating him, unaware that I was rushing down to them. He turned around just in time to see the barrel of my pistol aimed point blank to his head.

*BANG*

The blue stallion was lying, bleeding on the ground. He could barely breath and each breath came with a cough and some blood. The yellow mare was holding him. 

“Hes not going to make it.” Deadbolt at least had the decency to sound sorry for him. 

“You don’t know that.” I said, trying to convince myself that he might pull through. Maybe if we could get some help he’d be fine, I thought to myself. 

“Do you have any medical supplies? Because I sure don’t.” He said aggravated.

The yellow mare looked up at us. “Please, let us go.” She sounded like she thought we were going to keep them captive like these ponies had. 

“What? Of course we’re letting you go.” I was shocked that she thought we would even consider not doing so. “Deadbolt, search these ponies while I get them out.”

He just gave a grunt and trotted away to look for anything useful. I searched the nearest and found the key to the shackles. 

“Why did they have you guys chained up?” I asked as I started to unlock the shackles of the stallion. His legs were raw, the fur had been completely worn off and it was red and bleeding slightly where the shackle had been. 

“What do you mean? They’re raiders. They were gonna probably gonna sell us to some slavers. At least, I hope thats what they’re plan was.” The mare said rubbing her legs where the chains had been. She looked back at the stallion, his breathing was slowing even more. He wasn’t going to live much longer. “Theres nothing we can do for him.”

I sat on my haunches and stared down at the dieing unicorn.

The stallion let out a coughing fit. That lasted almost a minute, then he went limp. 

The yellow mare stood up and backed away from the dead stallion. DeadBolt and Rose joined us after searching the others. 

“My name’s Daisy. Daisy May.”

I looked back up to her. “Oh, um, I'm Rivet. This is DeadBolt and Rose.”

“Y’all are Stable ponies right?” She asked pointing at our Stable 12 bardings, “I don’t think I've ever seen a Stable pony this far from Las Pegasus.”

“Where do you plan on going Daisy?” DeadBolt cut in. 

“I'm heading back to Marefield. What about you three?” 

DeadBolt and I exchanged a quick glance. “Would you mind if we tagged along with you?” I asked.

“Absolutely!  Least I could do is guide you to town after y’all helped me out, but can I asked a favor?” She looked down at the blue stallion. “I don’t wanna leave him out here. Can we at least bury him first?” 

DeadBolt and I covered the shallow grave we had dug for the stallion. Daisy didn’t know his name so I didn’t know what to carve into the small stone I found to mark his grave. I ended up leaving it blank. 

Deadbolt laid everything he had looted from the corpses on the ground. They didn’t have much: a pistol and a smaller caliber revolver, a few bullets for each, a knife, a pool cue, some rotten meat, and some bottle caps. DeadBolt took the knife and the revolver; I took the other pistol. It was the same kind that I had but it seemed to be in slightly better condition. 

“Aren’t you going to take the caps?” Daisy asked as we got ready to head out.

”Why would we want some bottle caps?” Deadbolt asked. 

“Did y’all ponies come out of a Stable yesterday or something?” She asked sarcastically, 

DeadBolt and I glanced at each other. Deadbolt spoke up, “We’re not from around here, so humor us.”
Daisy gave us a strange look.  “Well, ‘round here we use caps as a currency”

“You're kidding... you use bottle caps as money?” Deadbolt asked.

“Umm, yeah we do...” Daisy’s look grew more and more confused.

DeadBolt gave another one of his aggravated sighs. “ Of course you do. Lets just get going.” 

It was a few hours walk to Marefield. The adrenaline from our fight with the raiders had worn off long ago and my leg started to hurt again. It was starting to get hard to walk on. I started limping when we were still about an hour outside of MareField. I had started to fall behind a little. Rose and DeadBolt took the lead. 

“Hey, are you okay?” Daisy asked. 

“Yeah, my leg kinda hurts, but I'll be fine.” 

She eyed me suspiciously. ”I don’t know, you're not looking so hot.”

I wasn’t feeling so hot either. I was thirsty, tired and wanted to stop walking. “I'm fine. How much farther is it to Marefield?” Once I had taken a break my leg would stop hurting.

“It’s just over that next hill. If it was a bit brighter you could see the smoke stacks.”

When we reached the top of the hill we finally saw Marefield. It looked like it was a decent-sized community, though I didn’t really have anything to compare it to. A wall of old billboards and train cars surrounded the town.The town had been built next to a small cliff face and and stretched partly onto it. Most of the houses were similar to the shack we had held up in last night only they looked like they had been taken care of a fair bit better. In the center of the town was a building that looked to be three stories. You could see lights starting to turn on all over town, slowly illuminating the dirt streets and metal pathways that crossed through the town. It was quite dark by the time we reached the gates.

As we approached the gates somepony yelled from above. “Hold up.”  We looked up to see a grey earth pony wearing a strange harness with two long barrels coming out of the sides, pointed straight at us.

After a second of scrutiny he recognized Daisy. “Oh, sorry Daisy. Didn’t see it was you. Who are these ponies with you?”

“It’s fine, Stead. These here ponies helped me out earlier. They won’t cause any trouble.” Daisy shouted back. 

“Alright if you say so.” He disappeared for a moment then the gates were enveloped with a green and blue glow as the two unicorn guards opened it for us. My Pip-Buck popped on with a message. 

-Discovered “Marefield”-

How the hell did it know that?

As we entered Daisy stopped us and pointed to the large building in the center of town. “Okay, theres a trader’s rest-stop on the first floor of the big place in the center of town. You guys can stay there for tonight. They’ve got food and water there too. The caps you guys got from the raiders should cover it. I'll meet back up with you and give you a proper tour in the morning.” 

Daisy went back to her place for the night. We wasted no time in getting to the large building. The rest-stop portion of the first floor was basically just a large room with a line up lockers and several rows of cots, but it was a welcome sight after walking all day.  

We stuffed our things in a locker and claimed a few beds. Rose waited for us while DeadBolt and I got some food and water with the few caps we had. She was the first one to fall asleep. 

“Hey Deadbolt.” 

He groaned. “What?”

“I'm really worried about Rose. She hasn’t said a word sense we got out of the Stable.” Actually she had barely made any noise at all. Its like she was a ghost just gliding along with us. 

He sighed. “I'm worried about her too Rivet. You saw what happened to her back in 12. Frankly I'm surprised she's been able to keep up with us. Actually, she's been doing a better job of it than you have been all day. Are you okay?”

It was my turn to sigh. “I'm fine. I just need some rest and I'll be good as new.”

“Alright, if you say so. And who knows, maybe if we stay here a couple of days and rest, she’ll snap out of it.” 

“I hope you're right.” I turned and tried to get some sleep. My leg kept me up most of the night. I had hoped being off of it for a while would make it stop hurting but It hadn’t helped. 

When I woke up Rose and DeadBolt had already left the trader’s room. I got up and headed out into Marefield. I was surprised by all of the ponies that lived here. The streets were  packed with ponies going about their business. 

“Rivet, over here.” Somepony called out. I looked over and saw Daisy waving me over. She was standing with the guard from last night. Now that it was light out I got a better look at him. He was grey with a charcoal colored mane. His cutie mark was some sort of gun, it resembled the ones he had strapped to either side of him. 

“So this is the guy who saved you from becoming a raider fuck-toy, huh?” The grey stallion said as I approached. His voice was booming even when he wasn’t shouting. He wasn’t exactly a subtle pony.

“He sure is!” Daisy replied happily “Rivet, this is SteadFast.”

“Uh, hi nice to meet you.”

He gave me a quick once over. “Marefield owes you something fierce. Don’t know what we would have done without our only doctor.” As he said that I noticed Daisy’s cutie mark. It was a red cross with a roll of bandages wrapping around it. “Listen, if you need anything, don’t hesitate to ask.” 

“Actually, I do have some questions to ask if you don’t mind.” There was a lot on my mind. With any luck somepony around here could answer even a few of my questions. 

“No problem, ask away.”

My stomach let out an audible rumble. “Um, maybe we could talk over some breakfast?” 

Steadfast and Daisy both laughed. 

“Sure thing. Daisy, why don’t you go fetch his friends?”

“Alright, meet you at the diner.” She said and trotted off. 

I sat staring and poking at the plate of strange food that had been placed in front of me. It was some kind of meat. I’ve never eaten meat before and the thought didn’t really excite me. 

“What, y’all never had Radhog before?” Daisy asked in a teasing manner. “Its really not that bad. Give it a try!” 

Deadbolt and I looked at eachother, then back to the strange food. Tentatively I took a small bite. Surprisingly enough, it actually wasn’t that bad.  It was certainly a drastic change from having eaten almost nothing but apples my entire life.

“So Rivet, hows that leg of yours? It feeling better?” Daisy asked. It actually was feeling a lot better than it had last night. The burning had gone away, it hurt slightly when I walked but It wasn’t any cause for alarm.

“Yeah, its fine now.” I was starting to get annoyed by everypony asking me if I was alright.

Steadfast let out a chuckle while watching the three of us start to eat the weird meat.

“So, you said you had some questions for me?” He asked

“Oh, right.” Where to begin? I figured I’d start small. “What's with the harness?” I asked pointing at the strange weapon sitting next to the table.

“Oh that? It’s a battle saddle.” He must have noticed the confused look on my face, as he decided to elaborate. “You see, some weapons are too big or powerful to wield effectively in your mouth or with magic, so they’re made into a harness you can wear. Makes ‘em much more stable.” 

I studied the large weapon. It reminded me of the weapons that the armored ponies had used. “Are there other kinds of battle saddles?” 

“Oh sure, there's tons of different ones. You got some larger rifles, like that one there, machine guns, missile launchers, hell, you can even find some of the large magical energy weapons in battle saddle form.”

None of those sounded like something I would want to go up against in a fight. Especially when all I have is a small pistol. “Magical energy weapons?” I asked.

Steadfast nodded, he was clearly happy to show off his knowledge of weapons. “Very different kind of weapon compared to your average gun. They use energy packs instead of magazines or clips and fire beams of magical energy instead of bullets. They’re a bit more rare but you can find them all over the Las Pegasus area.” 

I took a look around the room. The diner was full of patrons. Close to twenty Earth ponies or Unicorns but no pegasi. “I can’t help but notice that I haven't seen a pegasus sense we got here.”

“That’s because there aren’t any pegasi Marefield.” Daisy explained.

“Why’s that?” Deadbolt asked as he took another bite of Radhog.

“It’s a long story.” Said Steadfast.

“Well we don’t exactly have anywhere to be.” Deadbolt said sarcastically.

“Well you know about the war right?” He was talking about the Pony/Zebra war that happened over 200 years ago. It was the reason that the Stables were built. 

Deadbolt and I just nodded.

“Well in the last days of the war the Zebras got desperate. They dropped massive alchemic bombs on most of the major cities in Equestria. One of the first cities to get hit was one of the bigger pegasi cities, Cloudsdale. As soon as Cloudsdale fell, the pegasi retreated into the clouds and pulled the skies closed. That’s why it’s always cloudy. You might occasionally get some breaks through the clouds, but they usually don’t last long. But anyway, now almost no pegasi are ever seen on the ground.”

The thought that there was even more above the layer of clouds was actually a little scary. I still wasn’t used to the outside. Every time I looked up I felt vertigo at the sight of the sky.

“Almost?” I asked.

The grey stallion let out a sigh. “You do see some, but they're almost always trouble. They’ve either been exiled or they’re part of the Enclave, but the Enclave haven't been seen around Las Pegasus for a long time, ever since the Steel Rangers ran them out of the area, that is. Sometimes they send their ‘scouting parties’ out around Trottingham or Whinneypeg, but-”

“I saw a pegasus leading the group of ponies that attack our stable.” I interrupted. “He had some ponies in some kind of robot armor working for him, but they weren’t pegasi.”

Daisy and Steadfast exchanged a quick worried glance. 

“That sounds like the Organization.” Daisy said to Steadfast.

Once again, SteadFast picked up on our confused looks. “A small group of Pegasi that came down from the cloud layer about ten years ago now. They made a group they call ‘The Organization.’ They’ve been stealing up all of the pre-war tech they can get their hooves on. They’re even worse than the Steel Rangers ,and better equipped too. I’ve never heard of them attacking a Stable before though.” 

“They were looking for this.” I ejected Y34RK and handed to SteadFast.

DeadBolt nudged me. “Rivet, a word.” He grabbed my leg and dragged me away from the table. DeadBolt glared at me and spoke under his breathe, “We have a small army of well equipped ponies that are willing to slaughter an entire Stable full of ponies to get pre-war technology hunting us. Do you really think its a good idea to show off thing that they attacked the Stable for?” 

I shook his hoof off of me. “I trust these ponies, they’re the first ones that don’t seem like they want to kill us. Besides we saved one of them, and from the sounds of it they don’t like this ‘Organization’. I doubt they’re going to throw us over to them.” I walk back and took my seat again. “Sorry about that. DeadBolt’s a bit paranoid.” 

SteadFast handed the chip back to me. “What is it?”

I slid the Y34RK back into my Pip-Buck. “No idea.” 

He sat back and took his hoof through his mane. “It’s gotta be something important if they attacked a Stable to get to it. How the hell did you three manage to get out with it?” 

*WAMB* The door to the diner swung open drawing the attention of everyone in the the room. A light green unicorn stallion rushed up to our table. “Steadfast, there you are! We need you at the front gate!”

Steadfast stood up grabbed his Battle Saddle. “What's the problem?”

“Its those Organization bastards, they say they’re looking for somepony.”

The grey stallion strapped his Battle Saddle on and rushed out the door with the unicorn. 

We all exchanged worried glances. How did that old saying go? Speak of the Draconequus and he shall appear?

We ran quickly down to the front gates, but were stopped by one of the guards. “You three should stay out of sight.” He warned. “Its one of those Organization pegasi. Says he’s looking for three Stable-dwellers.” He explained looking at our bardings. 

“How the hell did they find us here?” DeadBolt asked himself. 

“Follow me, I know where we can watch them without being spotted.” Daisy took off up one of the ramps leading to one of the shacks that was up on the small cliff. 

We were hidden by some shadows and hopefully we were far enough off to the side where the ponies at the gate wouldn’t look. We could see SteadFast and a group of other guards talking to a pegasus accompanied by two of the robot ponies. This pegasus was a different one than I had seen back in Stable 12. That pony was a teal-blue and this pony was red with a yellow mane that looked like fire. I could just make out his flaming wings cutie mark. He wore a suit like the other pegasus, but this pony’s was jet black. 

“We know that they’re here. Just bring them out and we’ll be on our way.” I could hear the pegasus yelling to the guards. 

“I don’t know what the hell you're talking about. I haven't seen any Stable-dwellers enter Marefield and I'm sure any of the other guards would have told me if any had come by.” Steadfast yelled back. “Besides if they had come here, what makes you think we’d turn them over to you Organization bastards anyway?” 

One of the armored ponies was looking around, his eyes fixed on us as he spotted us up on the cliff.. He must had said something to the other one because he looked by and stared us down as well. 

“Bring out the Stable-dwellers. We promise that no harm will come to them.” The fiery-haired pegasus demanded. 

“Bullshit, we all know how The Organization works. Even if we did know where the Stable-dwellers were, you would butcher them and steal anything they had before they cleared the gates.”

One of the robot leaned forward and whispered something to their leader. He glanced up at us, then back at Steadfast. “Fine, we’ll be on our way. But be sure that Mr. Avarice will hear about this transgression.” The pegasus turn and started to walk away. His two goons sat for a few seconds starting up at us before following. 

We quickly made our way down to SteadFast. “Well they know you're here. That’s for sure.”

I could see the understanding dawn on DeadBolt’s face. “Fuck... Our security tags.” 

“Our what?” I asked him.

“Dammit!” He shouted and kicked at the ground. “That’s how they followed us, and probably why they didn’t bother to chase us. They must have found our security tags in one of the Stable’s terminals.” 

Fuck... I had completely forgotten about those. Each Pip-Buck is given a security tag that is used to find the wearer if he or she goes missing or gets lost. Getting lost didn’t happen much in a Stable but it was still possible. If they did have our security tags, that meant they could follow us no matter where we went.

“What are we going to do now? If they can track us we’ll never be safe.” 

Steadfast cut in. “Listen, we still owe you guys for helping Daisy. If you stay here we’ll keep you safe.” 

DeadBolt wasn’t calmed, “Wasn’t it you that said they were super well-equipped? What's stopping them from just coming on into town with more of those armored goons and just wiping the place out?” You could hear the frustration in DeadBolt’s voice. For once I didn’t blame him for being angry. 

“Avarice may be power-hungry, but I doubt he’s insane enough to try to attack a settlement as big as Marefield. We’re that last major settlement before New Pegasus. That’s a few days travel west. If Marefield is attacked, a major supply line to the Las Pegasus area will go with it and that’s not something that’ll go unnoticed. I highly doubt that Avarice is dumb enough to do that.” Steadfast seemed sure of himself. But we had seen The Organization attack that Stable. I didn’t like the idea of that happening to Marefield too because of us. 

It was about then that the pain in my leg came back. It was worse than ever. 

“Ugh, I don’t think we should stay in Marefield very long.” 

DeadBolt turned to me. “And just where do you suggest we go, Rivet?” 

I felt hot. It was getting hard to even stand on my leg. “I don’t... I don’t know”

I could see a growing concern in Daisy’s face. “Rivet, are you feeling okay?”

“I'm fine.” I shouted at her. I clearly wasn’t. My head was spinning, I could barely think straight.

“Rivet, calm down.” Steadfast said. 

It was starting to get hard to breath. “Why should I be calm? Were being hunted down by a group of ponies that can track us no matter where we go!” Why was I so angry all of a sudden?

Deadbolt turned on me. “Rivet, what the hell’s gotten into you?” 

I turned to scream at him but before I could my leg gave out from under me. “Arg!” 

The last thing I heard before I passed out was the only thing I had wanted to hear sense we left the Stable.

“Rivet!” It sounded distant as my vision faded but I knew that voice, Rose’s voice.

> Chapter 3: Outing
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

I was in and out of consciousness for some time. I would wake up for a few seconds and hear somepony talking. I couldn’t tell who or what about before I passed out again. Occasionally I would catch a glimpse of somepony behind a curtain, but the shadow was too indistinct to tell who it was. Each time I would wake up my head felt like it was caught in a spiral and my body was burning.

When I finally came to, my head was pounding and cloudy. Looking around the room. I was in a clinic. Medical supplies laid on a table nearby and I was surrounded by a green curtain. It looked a lot like the one in the Stable, only this one had walls of slightly rusted sheet metal. How the hell did I get here?

I went to rub my eyes but I couldn't move my leg. Actually, I couldn’t even feel it. I started to panic before jolting my head to look. Thankfully it was still attached, but the sudden jerk of my head shot pain through my head from the base of my skull.. There was an IV stuck in my leg, which I assumed was responsible for the lack of feeling. I let my head fall back onto the pillow and let out a sigh of relief.

I hadn’t actually taken a look at my leg until now. I had been stripped out of my barding and got a full view of it now. The gash the robot ponies gun had given me was larger than I thought it was, it was being held shut by some stitches. The fur around it had been shaved off, the skin was a sickening green.

The door creaked open and somepony approached the curtain. Daisy grabbed it with her mouth and swung it open. She had a clipboard and pencil strapped to her side.

“Finally awake I see. You gave us all quite a scare back there.” She said with a smile.

I rubbed my head with my working leg. “Yeah... what am I doing here?”

She cocked her head. “You don’t remember hollering your flank off and passing out yesterday?”

Oh... right. “Sorry, I don't know what came over me. I wasn’t thinking straight.”

She huffed. “With a fever as high as yours was, I would have been surprised if you were. I think that, plus the stress from the bad news yesterday, was a little much for ya. You had a pretty serious infection. You really should have let someone take a look at that leg. You’re pretty lucky you didn’t lose it. Now I’m gonna ask you this again. and your answer better be ‘I’m fine’: How are you feeling?”

“Awful.”

Daisy chuckled at that. “You and your brother are stubborn as hell, you know that? You should have seen him. Yesterday, after we brought you in and treated ya, he decided to do some target practice with that revolver of his. I've never seen such a bad shot, I don’t think he ever hit a target. He refused to stop until he hit something though.”

It hurt my head to laugh. “I don’t think Deadbolt would appreciate you telling me that.” He probably also wouldn’t appreciate us being compared in any way. I looked back down at my leg. “Is it okay that I can’t feel my leg?”

She waved me off. “Don’t worry ‘bout that. I numbed it while I was working on ya. It’ll start wearing off here pretty soon. That IV should help clear up the infected skin. You should be out of here in a few hours.”

“Thanks Daisy, you guys have helped us so much.”

She just gave me a smile. “I’d say we’re about even now.”

“Yeah...” That's when I remembered something. “How’s Rose?”

“Shes doing just fine, Rivet. Took some convincing to get her out of here and to go to sleep last night. She’s been rightly worried about ya. Hold on a minute, I’ll go tell her you're awake.”

She hung the clipboard on the end of the bed and trotted out. My curiosity got the better of me. I levitated the clip over to me. Then almost immediately put it back. I couldn’t read anything Daisy had written on the thing. I guess writing with your mouth is a bit hard.

Was Rose really talking again? She hadn’t made so much as a sound in the last few days. All I could think of was how much I wanted to hear her voice again. Time seemed to move slower waiting for Daisy to come back.

I laid my head back down. It was still pounding, though I was feeling better than I had yesterday. My body wasn’t burning up anymore and my leg didn’t feel like a knife was jammed in it, though that was probably because it was numbed.

The door swung open again and Daisy returned with Rose and Deadbolt. Rose galloped up to me ahead of them.

“Thank Celestia you're alright!” The ruby mare said dashing up to the side of my bed. Her voice was better than any medicine Daisy could possibly give me. All of the stress from the last few days melted away. Rose was finally talking again, talking a lot actually. I was too busy smiling at her to pay attention though.

“Hey! are you even listening?” She snapped.

I wrapped my uninjured foreleg around her neck and hugged her.

“Um, Rivet? Are you okay?”

I let go of her. “Yeah, I'm just fine.” That drew a smile onto her face. That was another thing I had missed.

“Touching.” Deadbolt said dryly. ”Can we get serious now?”

Rose turned to him. “Deadbolt you could at least act like you were concerned for your brother.”

“He looks fine to me.” He said flatly. “We need to talk about what we’re going to do.”

Daisy stepped in. “No, no ,no. Rivet is still under my care. He needs to relax while he’s in here. There will be no stressful talk of plans until he's out. Besides Steadfast said you guys can stay here as long as you want, so there will be plenty of time to talk later.”

Deadbolt let out a groan and turned to leave.

“Did you seriously only come to make plans and not to see if your little brother was alright?” Rose asked him incredulously.

“Yes I did.” The brown unicorn didn’t even bother to turn back to answer and left.

“I can’t believe him. Its like he does care at all!” Rose complained.

I shrugged. “He does care, he just doesn’t like to show it.”

Frankly, I was surprised he even came at all. I always liked to think I could read Deadbolt, he was always angry or mean but there were levels to it, and coming in here and being rude was the “I might be upset if you had died” level. Which is about as nice as I ever got from him.

The numbness in my leg was starting to fade. Daisy decided it was time to check her work. “You had a bit of shrapnel in your leg, I had to go digging around to get it all out. I just want to make sure that everything's in check. Tell me if this hurts.” She took her pencil and pressed it against my leg.

“Ow!”

“Oh you baby.” Rose laughed as Daisy pressed the pencil down again. She did the check a few times going down my leg. She was not gentle about jabbing me.

“Alrighty, everything seems fine. You have your feeling back in your leg. I’m gonna have to ask you not to run on it for a while though, might tear the stitches. I still want you to stay here until the skin clears up though.” The doctor said through her pencil as she scribbled something down on the clipboard.

“Daisy, I really am feeling fine now. I think I’d be fine to go.”

Daisy just eyed me angrily.

“Okay, I'll stay.”

I spend the next few hours in the clinic. Daisy was adamant about not letting me leave until she was sure the infection was completely gone, I didn’t blame her but I really did feel fine. She also made me promise over a dozen times that I would go see her next time I had an injury, regardless of how minor.

We made our way through the dusty roads of Marefield. From further away, most of the houses seemed almost ramshackle, but they were surprisingly sturdy if just a little rusty. The streets were as busy as they were yesterday. Ponies rushing around working and trading with each other, a few foals and fillies playing around. I hadn’t taken time to appreciate the town until now. Sure, it was dirty, rusted and outside the walls was a dry wasteland, but still, Marefield seemed almost idyllic compared to life elsewhere. It was drastically different from Stable 12, where you were either going to or coming from your job assignment.

Rose and I were making our way back to the Rest-Stop when we saw Steadfast and another Earth-pony guard talking, I couldn’t hear what it was about but Steadfast looked angry, but from the looks of it, not at the guard, more so about what they were talking about.

The guard left as we approached. “Dammit.” Steadfast said to himself, as he kicked up some dirt, unaware we were behind him.

“Something wrong?”

He looked back at us confused for a second. “Oh, Rivet, good to see your feeling better. Don’t worry about it.” There was clearly something on his mind.

“Come on Steadfast, what's bothering you? maybe we can help.” Rose asked him.

He bit his lip as he scowled. “Well, you see, we’ve been having some trouble with the caravans lately.”

“What kind of trouble?”

He shrugged. “That's the thing. We don’t rightly know. We were supposed to get one in last night but they haven't showed up yet.”

“Could it be the Organization getting back at you for hiding us?” I couldn’t help but think it might have been our fault. The pegasus had seen us yesterday, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were behind this.

The grey stallion shook his head. “I highly doubt it, this isn't the first one to disappear on us recently. Two others have gone missing in the last few months. If this keeps up ponies are gonna start looking for another way to get to the Las Pegasus area. If that happens, Marefield might be in some trouble.”

“Why don’t you send someone to check out what's happening to them?” Rose asked the charcoal-maned pony.

He sighed. “We would but we need to keep most of our guards here and I doubt anypony would be willing to volunteer to go if they didn’t have to. Most of the ponies in town never leave; they have almost no experience in the wasteland”

Then Rose did exactly what I expected her to do. She volunteered us. “We could go take a look.” Rose liked to help ponies, even if they didn’t ask for it. Usually that meant Deadbolt getting mad at me. In this case however, I would actually be glad to help too.

He shook his head again. “No, Deadbolt said that you guys are being tracked. If you guy ran into the Organization while out there I would be responsible for getting you three killed. Besides you have even less experience than the ponies who never leave town.”

“We fought our way of a Stable filled with insane raiders, escaped the Organization once already, and freed your doctor from some ponies who planned to sell her into slavery. I think we can handle ourselves.” Steadfast opened his mouth to argue, but Rose continued, “And what? Are we supposed to just wait around and hope the Organization doesn’t decide to attack the town looking for us. You guys have helped us so much, its time we started paying you guys back.” She failed to mention the facts that we barely escaped the Stable, and that they didn’t even bother to chase us after we got out. Not too mention we let the raiders who had captured Daisy too kill the other pony they had.

Steadfast opened his mouth again. Rose gave him an expression she gave me quite often back in the Stable. It was her “I'm helping regardless of what you say” look.

The guard sighed. “Fine, but I'm coming with you.”

“Didn’t you just say you needed all the guards here?”

Steadfast gave a nod. “I did, but we can spare one guard. As long as it's just me going we’ll be fine. So if we’re going, I would like to make it fast. Get ready to leave as soon a possible. I’ll meet you by the gate.”

“Alright. now we just got to convince Deadbolt to help.” I said as we trotted back to the Rest-Stop in the center of town.

When we got back to the Rest-Stop Deadbolt had taken off his Stable 12 barding and was putting it into the locker. It had been a while since I saw his wrench and bolt cutie mark. Our bardings covered most of body so a lot of the time you couldn’t see someones cutie mark.

“What are you doing?” I asked

He closed the locker. “Getting out of that damn barding. I'm sick of wearing it.”

It hadn’t even crossed my mind that I didn't have to wear mine anymore. It seemed weird to think about not having it on all the time. I looked down at mine. You could see the last few days on it. A few small holes were torn in the right foreleg, where I had taken a shotgun shell from far range, the left had the gash where the guns from the robot pony had glanced me. It had mud stains as well as some small splashes of red, not all of it was my blood either. I actually liked my barding though. It seriously needed a wash and some repairs, but I didn’t want to get rid of it. I looked at Rose. Her’s was ripped, it had been torn off her by a raider trying to have his way with her. You could see the rose cutie mark where it was torn off her legs.

“Oh, well we need to talk about something.”

He turned and raised his eyebrow.

“We’ve decided to help Steadfast with a problem he's been having. Some caravans have apparently been disappearing. We’re gonna go check out what's happening to them.” I explained

“Are you two crazy?” He didn’t share Rose's enthusiasm for helping out Marefield. “If we leave we run risk of getting captured by the Organization. I say we don’t leave the town unless completely necessary.”

“So your plan is to mooch off of Marefield as long as they’ll let you?”

He sat down on one of the beds. “I never said anything about mooching off the ponies here. I'm just saying we should play it safe. If we’re going to help, we should do it around town.” he huffed.

“Steadfast said they don’t have enough guards to be able to send some out to investigate. Besides, Steadfast said he wanted to make it fast, we’ll go, see what's happening and get back before the Organization even know we’ve left Marefield.”

Deadbolt seemed to actually think about it for a moment, then said, “I don’t think it's a good idea.”

“Fine then, you can stay here. Rivet and I are going.” Rose said definitively.

He groaned. “Luna dammit. Fine, I'll help.”

Steadfast was waiting for us by the gates when we got there, he had dawned some rough looking clothes made of some thick cloth. Deadbolt had decided to only take his knife, he gave the revolver to Rose.

“Maybe you’ll actually be able to hit something with that.” Steadfast said to Rose while giving Deadbolt a wry smile.

Rose and I chuckled at that. Daisy had told me about Deadbolt’s shooting, and apparently Steadfast had seen it too. Deadbolt just glared at us.

“Thought you guys might need these.” On the ground in front of him were three saddle bags, they were made out of the same rough material as the clothes he was wearing. We each put one on. They each has a small holster for smaller weapons; I put my pistol in it. It would be nice to not have to carry it everywhere anymore.

“Alright, you guys ready to head out?” Steadfast already had his giant rifles strapped to his sides. I didn’t want to get into any kind of fight, but I did kind of want to see how those things worked.

I checked the ammo I had for my pistol. Two full magazines worth. Rose also checked how much she had for her revolver.

“Yep, lets get going.”

Steadfast gave a wave to the unicorn guards and the large gates were soon engulfed in the glow from there magics and opened. We crossed out into the wasteland and they closed behind us.

“So which way are we heading?” I asked looking at the split road. It went off in three directions North, east and west.

Steadfast pointed down the road to the north. “We’re heading up north to Trottingham. That's where the caravans come from on there way through. They stop in Marefield before heading out to the Las Pegasus area; that's where the west road goes. They usually stop in New Pegasus before making a circle around to all the smaller settlements, then head back up north. the east road there will take you to Whinneypeg.”

“What about south?” Deadbolt asked

Steadfast just shook his head slightly. “There ain’t nothing to the south. Just a giant dessert. We call it the Barrens, you won’t make it very far down there, even if you do have plenty of water. There are some seriously nasty creatures down there. Let's get going, I’d like to find the caravan before dark.”

The road seemed to stretch on forever in a straight line. The only thing blocking the view were two large mountains standing next to each other. They each had a strange spiral formation that went from top to bottom of the mountains. The area around Marefield seemed almost entirely barren. Most of the vegetation we saw amounted to some blackened trees and some old dead bushes, with the occasional tumbleweed.

Every now and then a red light would flash up on my EFS. But steadfast said it was probably just some Geckos or Rad-Hogs, and they probably wouldn’t attack us in a group like this. It still made me nervous whenever one showed up though.

We passed a large two story ruined building on the way. A large section of the building had collapsed in on itself. The sign on the top of the building was missing a few letters and read Fe_ru Te_hnol_g_es.

Discovered: Ferrum Technologies

“Oh really?” I said aloud, looking at my Pip-buck.

“What was that?” Rose asked, turning her head back to me.

“Huh? Oh, nothing.”

We walked for a few hours before deciding to take a rest.  We found a small overhang and sat under it for some shade. The walking wasn’t so bad, but the heat seemed to sap the energy from me. We sat around and ate some fruit Deadbolt had bought earlier that day.

Steadfast took a large bite of his apple. “So Rivet, I’ve been thinking.”

“About what?”

He pointed to my Pip-Buck. “About that chip you got. You said you found it in the Stable, right?”

“Um, yeah, why?” I asked, confused.

“Well, that means it was put there by Stable-tech back before the war right?” He asked rhetorically.

I nodded. “Yeah, so what?”

“Well I was thinking, and I might have an idea where you could find out more about it.”

I paused mid-bite. “Wait, what?”

He scratched the back of his head. “I'm not one hundred percent on this, but maybe one of the old Stable-tech buildings would still have something about it. A surprising amount of those old terminals still work you know.”

“Do you know where any of the old buildings are?” If there was a chance at finding out what Y34RK was I wanted to try it.

“I know of two. One is out near New Pegasus, but I can’t suggest you guys head out that way. The Organization does most of its ‘business’ through the Las Pegasus area. That leaves the one up in Trottingham. When we get back to Marefield I can find a map and show where it is. Assuming that they haven't been taken over by raiders or are infested with some kind of creatures or simply collapsed by now I would say that those are your best bet.” He explained

He might just be right about that .If we were going to get anything it would probably be something from Stable-tech. That's probably how the Organization found out about it. Steadfast said they were going around taking any pre-war tech they could get, an old Stable-tech building would probably be full of pre-war technology.

“You can’t be serious. You're still thinking about trying to figure out what that thing is?” Deadbolt asked. “I still say you should ditch it.”

“Yes, I am. At least until I know what it is. After that we’ll just have to see.” I’m not sure why but I felt like I needed to know what was so important about it.

“I'm with Rivet,” Rose said tilting her head in my direction, “I wanna know why that thing is so important to them too.”

Steadfast looked up at the layer of clouds above us. It looked like they were starting to get darker. “Hmm, looks like it might rain.” he grimaced.

Rose gave him a concerned look. “Is that bad?”

He shrugged. “Depends. It doesn’t rain too often around here but when it does, it comes down hard. But as long as its not a lightning storm we should be fine.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. I had only ever read about lightning, but it didn't sound like something I'd want to encounter. “Lightning storm?”

“Yeah, storms get pretty bad around here. It can be pretty dangerous to travel in them. If it comes to it we’ll need to find some shelter and wait it out.” He explained. “We should get moving again. Even if it doesn’t rain, its going to be pretty dark by the time we reach The Horns.”

We all threw the rest of our food and water back into our backs and headed out. I looked up at the darkening clouds. We’ve been out of the Stable for almost five days and looking up at the sky still gave me vertigo. I pulled my eyes off the cloud layer and shook my head. “I hope it doesn’t storm.”

We still had quite a bit of walking left to do. Daisy said she didn’t want me running on my leg for a while. She never said anything about long hikes, but I still didn't put too much weight on my bad leg.

“How far do we plan on going before we head back?” Deadbolt asked.

Steadfast pointed to the twin mountains in front of us, we were getting nearer but it would still be a few hours walk to get there. “I'm willing to go just past the Horns, if we can’t see the caravan by the time we get out of the pass we’re heading back.” The gray stallion clearly didn’t want to stay out of Marefield long.

It was getting late when we reached the base of the mountains. The clouds had darkened and had become almost black. As we approached the mountains my Pip-buck popped on with another message

Discovered: The Horns.

Seriously, how did this thing know where I was before I did?

“Why are they called the Horns?” I asked Steadfast

“Well take a look at 'em. The spiral that goes around them makes ‘em look like unicorn horns.” He chuckled.

I thought about how they looked when we were in the distance. Maybe I didn’t have much an imagination , because they definitely just looked like mountains to me and not horns; But I didn’t feel like debating it.

There was a pass between the two mountains. Each side was a sheer, high cliff face of red and brown rock. The pass however was the black and gray broken up road that we had been following all day. It wasn’t very narrow; it had plenty of room for the four of us to walk side-by-side comfortably. In the middle of the pass we finally caught sight of the caravan.

There were two wagons. Both of them were toppled over, and broken apart. The ground was stained red around where the wagons were. Laying there, still attached to one of the wagons was the corpse of some creature. It had red-brown skin that was wrinkled, but more surprising than its strange, gross skin, was the fact that it had two heads. One of the necks had a large chunk taken out, responsible for a pool of blood the creature laid in. Its stomach had been torn open, something had made a meal of it. The stench coming off of it was almost enough for me to vomit. That combined with seeing its insides made it take a lot of willpower not to do so.

“Brahmin. We use ‘em to pull the wagons.” Steadfast explained as I looked at the weird creature. “Looks like something came by and found some dinner.”

“Where are all the other bodies?” Deadbolt asked in a solemn tone.

I took a look around. He was right, this was the only body here. No ponies and no other brahmin to pull the second wagon.

“That's a good question. There should have been at least a trader and two guards per wagon, not to mention one more Brahmin.” Steadfast said as he looked around. “Seven bodies don’t just disappear.”

“Hey guys, take a look at this!” Rose called from around the other side of the wagon. She was looking in a crate that had fallen off when the wagon flipped.

We all gathered and she threw the lid off. It was full of bottles and vials of some red liquid. Some had busted open on impact but there was still a few left in tact.

“Healing potions?” Steadfast seemed surprised to seem them there. He looked at them for a moment before quickly moving over to open another box. “There's ammo still in this one.”

I used my magic to open another. “This one’s full of food.” I called back to them.

Deadbolt opened another. “Clothes here.”

Steadfast furrowed his brow and bit his lip. “Who the hell attacks a caravan and doesn’t take the supplies? I don’t know anypony that dumb.”

A loud rumble shook through the sky. I nearly leapt out of my fur. “What the hell was that?” I asked looking up at the sky. I started to get dizzy as soon as I did and firmly planted my eyes back to the ground.

“Damn, that's thunder. Its going to storm soon.” He said looking up as well. “Grab whatever you can carry, we’ll need to find somewhere to hold up.”

Rose grabbed all of the healing potions that hadn’t been broken open (there was five total) along with some healing bandages and some of the clothes. Deadbolt grabbed some of the bottles of water and whatever food that didn’t appear to be rotten. I broke open another one of the crates and found some new weapons. A shotgun, but it was different than the ones I had seen so far. It had too short barrels that each only held one shot. Another pistol, again the same model as mine, it was apparently a common piece, and a large battle saddle similar to the one that Steadfast had strapped to him. I didn’t know how to work it, and it would have been too heavy to carry with us, so I left it. I topped off with some ammo for each of our weapons, including some shells for my new shotgun.

Steadfast had gone ahead to look for somewhere we could use for shelter while we searched the caravan. He came galloping back a few minutes later. The rumbling of thunder was starting to get louder and rain was starting to sprinkle down making dips in the wasteland's dusty layer. The cool drops were actually a bit of relief from the heat, at least they were until it started to pour. Then it was just cold.

“I found a cave we can wait out the storm in. It just up ahead.”

The rain was coming down harder by the second. We galloped to get to the cave that Steadfast had found.

*Boom!*

A bright flash followed closely by a deafening blast of thunder stopped me in my tracks. I nearly pissed myself. My legs didn’t want to work for a second as the thunder and lightning passed, only to be replaced with more the instant the rumbling stopped.

“Dammit Rivet, come on, you can be scared of the storm when we get something over our heads!” Deadbolt yelled.

I shook my head. “Ri-Right, sorry.”

It was pouring, we got to the cave completely soaked. Lightning flashed and thunder boomed outside, making me jump each time.

Rose let out a sigh of relief. “Thank Celestia we’re out of that.”

“Yeah.” Steadfast replied, looking farther into the cave.

It was dark, damp and cold. From what Steadfast had told us, I assumed we would be spending the night here. Not something I was totally thrilled about. Even the shack we stayed in our first night in the wasteland seemed more inviting than this place.

The cave stretched far back, softly glowing mushrooms barely illuminated the caves interior. I couldn’t help but be curious about exploring the rest of it.

Deadbolt pulled out some of the food he recovered from the caravan and passed it around, along with some water. “We were going to be here a while, might as well get comfy for now.”

Steadfast stood near the entrance looking out at the pouring rain and flashes of lightning. He sighed and trotted over, taking a seat next on a larger rock nearby. He unstrapped his rifles and slid his saddle off.

“Yep, no way we’re getting out of here tonight with it coming down like that.” He took a piece of fruit from Deadbolt and bit into it. “We should all try to get some sleep. We’re leaving as soon as the storm passes.”

Sleep actually sounded like a great idea. It had been a long day of walking, though I doubted I was going to get much. Between the hard, uneven, wet ground, the sound of the rain and the lightning making me jump every thirty or so seconds, I was in for a long night.

I managed to find a place that wasn’t wet to lay on, though there was a rock jabbing into my side that seemed to move with me as I tossed and turned trying to find a nice way to lay. It took a long time for me to finally fall asleep.

Something nudged me lightly, waking me up. “Rivet, wake up.” It was Steadfast, and he had his battle saddle strapped on. I glanced outside; it was still pouring and pitch black except when a bolt of lightning illuminated the sky.

“What is it?” I asked him, rubbing my head trying to wake myself up.

He held his hoof to his mouth. “Shhh, listen.”

“All I can hear is the storm.”

He shook his head. “No, listen carefully.”

I sat quiet for a few seconds. I could hear something, it was quiet, coming from farther into the cave. It was quiet, and I could barely hear it over the sound of the rain. It sounded like somepony tearing apart wet cloth.

“What the hell is that?” I asked, staring into the darkness.

“Get your pistol, I'm going to go take a look.” He said as he slowly started down into the cave.

I grabbed my saddle-bag and strapped it around me. I levitated my pistol in front of me. The glow of my magic shone lightly off the walls of the cave. Rose turned and woke up.

“Rivet?” She asked, seeing me holding the gun. “What's going on?”

Deadbolt stirred and sat up, rubbing his head as he looked over at me.

“Steadfast heard something, we’re going to go check it out.” I said, turning to catch up with Steadfast.

Rose and Deadbolt both rose from where they were sleeping and grabbed their bags, Rose drawing her revolver with her mouth, Deadbolt holding his knife with his magic. My first reaction was to tell them to wait behind, but quickly decided that arguing would achieve nothing but unnecessary noise.

We made our way through the cave, descending as we got further into it. The smell of rain was soon replaced with the smell of rotten meat. Just as the sound of rain began to fade, the strange tearing noise grew louder, soon accompanied by some light snarling. My heart raced as we caught up with Steadfast who was pressed up against the wall of the cave. He tapped the side of his face, indicating toward his eyes.

It took me a second to get what he was trying to tell me. “Oh.” I breathed and pulled up my EFS. My vision swarmed with red. I couldn’t count all of the red lights that were in the next room.

Steadfast looked worried when he saw my expression. He tentatively took a look around the corner. He quickly brought his head back around and let out a quick breath.

“What is it?” I said, trying to keep my voice as low as possible.

“Not good, I think we found what attacked the caravans. Look.” He nodded his head towards the corner

He moved over and I took his spot against the wall, slowly peering around the corner. There were small creatures in the next room. They had gross matted yellow fur, their eyes seemed to almost glow with a deep red. A muzzle filled with small sharp fangs protruded from their heads. their legs ended with paws and razor sharp claws. They resembled the dogs that were in some of the pictures back in the stable, if those dogs were also part monster and traveled in swarms

Throughout the room where the corpses of ponies, torn open and coated with blood. Each had at least two of the beasts tearing it apart, some fighting over who got to eat first. They snarled at each other before shoving their head back into the bodies of the ponies and tearing off a large chunk of meat. There was at least a dozen of the monsters in the room, there could easily be more deeper in the cave.

I turned back and let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. “What the hell are those things?”

“I don’t know. We should get out of here.” Steadfast’s voice was low and serious.

“They’ll keep attack caravans if we don’t do something though.” Rose said in a hushed but forceful tone.

“And if we try to do something about we’ll get eaten alive.” Deadbolt said, turning and slowly starting to move backwards.

“Deadbolts right, we should leave. I'll come back later with a bigger team and clear them out. For now we need to get out of here.” Steadfast was just as eager as I was to get out of here.

We slowly started heading back. The ground was slicker than I thought, I tripped. I hit the ground with a loud thud, dropping my pistol which clattered as it hit and bounced on the rocks.

The cave went quiet, the tearing and snarling sounds stopped. The sound of the rain outside seemed to fade as I stared back at the bend.

Slowly one of the yellow hounds made its way around. It spotted me laying on the ground. Our eyes met. Its fangs dripped with blood and pieces of flesh from the caravan ponies. It stared back at me for what seemed like forever, then it started to growl, bearing its teeth, giving me a better sight of its razor sharp maw.

I tried to back up, but my hoof kept slipping on the wet rock. The beast began let out loud barks, starting the others doing the same.

*Boom!*

The beast was thrown back with the thunderous noise, blood spraying out like crimson ribbons.

I turned back to see Steadfast standing behind me, the barrels of his massive rifles smoking.

“Run!”

I got to my hooves and galloped as fast as I could, trying not to slip again. I scooped up my pistol with my magic as I bolted for the exit. Rose and Deadbolt were ahead of me, Steadfast following close behind.

We could hear the sounds of those things barking and howling, they weren't getting any further away. I turned back to see five of them already on us.

I turned and slid into SATS, even with the time slowing effects of the targeting spell they were approaching quick.

*Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang*

I managed to down one of them with the first shot. the second one hitting one in the leg, causing it to fall and trip the one behind it. The third shot missed, the fourth hitting home and blasting throw another one's skull.

By the time everything sped back up there was already more coming around the corner. The one in front pounced for Steadfast.

*Bang*

The dog-like creature flipped in the air with a loud yelp. I turned to and found Rose with her revolver in her mouth. She gave me a nod and I turned back and kept firing.

Steadfast unloaded with his rifles.

*Boom, Boom, Boom*

Each shot felled its target, he was a master with those rifles, hitting each one squarely between the eyes. But for each one he dropped another one swarmed out around it.

Another one leapt out of the pack. Deadbolt’s knife ripped across its neck, blood gushed from the wound at an alarming rate and it fell almost instantly.

Rose fired until her revolver clicked. She was a surprisingly good shot, she managed to hit with almost every shot.

“Move!” Steadfast shouted over the gunfire and barking.

The dog-like creatures seemed to be endless. The cave must have been packed with them.

I swung around and galloped again, switching my pistol out for the shotgun as I did. I only had two shots at a time with this but the spray would hit a lot more often then I could with the pistol.

I let Steadfast get in front of me and I fired blindly backwards. I heard one of the hounds yelp as I unloaded the first two shots. I peered back as I slammed the next two shells into the gun. The hounds were getting closer; we weren’t going to be able to outrun them.

We burst out of the cave into the pouring rain. The hounds closing in on us. One of them caught me, biting into my leg with tremendous force.

“ARG!” I screamed as I hit the ground. It jumped on top of me and went for my neck.

*Schlink!* Deadbolts knife cleaved through the hounds neck, covering me with blood. It fell, giving off a sickening gurgle as its blood bubbled from its mouth.

The wolves had almost gotten to me. The roaring of Steadfasts guns filled the air as he unloaded more rounds into the swarm of beasts.

*Boom, Boom, Boom*

I scrambled to my hooves, my leg hurt like hell, but the adrenaline gave me the energy to run on it, but not fast enough. My foreleg started to hurt again, I could feel the stitches starting to tear open again as I ran.

*Bang, Bang*

I let off a second volley as I darted away from the hounds.

I got behind Steadfast and pulled out the pistol again. I quickly reloading and joined him in firing into the oncoming mass.

Deadbolt stood in front of me swinging his knife at anything that got close. Another hound darted under his swing, grabbing onto his leg and pulling him down.

“Fuck!” He screamed as he brought the knife down on the beasts head. He pulled it out with a disgusting *Thrunk*.

More of the monsters were on him before he could get another swing out. Two pounced on him knocking him over.

*Bang,Bang* Two shots flew by me. Rose, downed one of the hounds clawing and biting at Deadbolt.

*Boom* Steadfast’s massive rifles blew the other away.

My vision started to blur. What the hell? I had to fight to keep my vision clear.

“Steadfast...” It was suddenly getting hard to stand, I was lightheaded and my pistol somehow felt too heavy to levitate.

“Rivet!” I could hear Steadfast yell as my legs gave out. I could barely make out Deadbolt crawling backwards and the glow of his knife cutting down some of the beasts as they lunged at him.

A massive arc of lightning ripped through the sky. The boom of thunder shook the ground. The barking of the hounds stopped.

The hounds looked nervously to the sky. Steadfast never stopped shooting. He dropped the hounds with amazing speed, while they were distracted, putting some distance between us and the remaining beasts.

They turned back to us, seeing their numbers dropping fast. Another crack of lighting and roar of thunder swept the skies. The beast turned and ran. Steadfast managed to take out a few more by the time they got back into the cave.

He spun around. “Rose! Get those potions out your bag!” Steadfasts voice was distant.

Rose passed him a potion and he told her to get one for Deadbolt. He put the bottle to my lips. Instantly I felt the cooling sensation of the potion. The bleeding bite mark in my leg and the reopened stitches began to close quickly.

My vision was gone, Steadfast was sitting right above me but I all I could see was a blur. He was shouting but I couldn’t make out the words. My body was going numb and I felt a weight pressing my chest. I had had never been as scared as I was in that moment. I wasn’t just dieing; my senses were being torn from me one at a time. Slowly my vision faded further, a black tunnel replacing the indistinct blurs in front of me. I'm not sure exactly when I lost consciousness.

I was asleep but I didn’t have any dreams. All around me was black; I was alone. There was no noise, no light. The pressure on my chest made it difficult to breathe, but I couldn’t feel anything. I was just floating in the darkness, unable to do anything. I called out for somepony, anypony, There was no response. there was nothing but the impenetrable darkness around me. I don’t know why, but I was scared. Scared to be alone, scared of this place. In the Stable I was almost always alone, except for Rose. I had always had her, ever since we were little. Now there was no one. I was alone in the darkness. I floated there, in the darkness, for what seemed like an eternity.

The darkness seemed to press in on me. The longer I was here the more the darkness terrified me. Murmurs starting coming from the darkness, indistinguishable words far in the distance. Just faint enough to here.

“Hello? Is somepony there?”

There was a pinching sensation in my neck. It was a sharp pressure, not outright painful, but uncomfortable. The murmurs grew louder, the voices sounded closer. I could start to pick out some of the words.

“What the hell?” I said rubbing my neck.

The voices stopped as quickly as the had come. The silence took over again. It felt worse this time, somehow even more oppressive. I felt the weight on my chest grow heavier. For a moment I thought there was somepony here to get me out of the blackness. Another eternity passed with nothing.

It felt like the darkness had started to weigh down on me. It was getting harder to breath.

“Heart... hold... down...” The voices came back, louder than before. They sounded scared and echoed around me. The words were clouded and seemed to come from all around me. They kept growing louder and louder.

There was a pounding on my chest. It felt like somepony was kicking me. The pounding was rhythmic, each one knocking the breath out of me. Another pinch in my neck, this one more violent, like I was getting stabbed. The pounding continued.

“Come...hold...Rivet...”

The voices sounded urgent. The pounding in my chest was feeling heavier by the second.

“You...die...”

My eyes shot open and I gasped for air, coughing with each intake. My chest hurt. I could feel somepony lift my head up. My vision cleared, Daisy was leaning above me, holding me up. She looked tired, and was soaked with rain water. The yellow mare smiled at me as my body calmed down.  Feeling returned to my body, which made me realize the aching pain in every inch of my body.  It still somehow felt better than the darkness, but it was barely tolerable.

I turned my head to try to get a bearing on where I was. I could see the cliff faces of the pass between the horns. Above me was some kind of wooden structure, I was under one of the wagons. How the hell did I get here? It was still raining. I could see Rose looking down at me, she was covered in mud and looked like she could pass out any second. Deadbolt was laying next to me, almost completely still other than the rising and falling of his chest.

I tried to talk, but my throat was dry and I couldn’t get the words out. Daisy put a bottle of water to lips and I drank greedily. A little too greedily, I started to choke and cough again. Each cough sent a shot of pain through my chest. I tried to sit up but my body wouldn’t respond.

“You know, Rivet.” Daisy said, pulling the bottle away from me. “Most ponies like to take time between visiting the doctor.”

I tried to laugh but my chest didn’t like when I did that. I struggled to speak, but I managed to ask, “What are you doing here?”

“Rose brought me here. She came bursting into the clinic last night. I could barely understand her, she was talking so fast. She said you and Deadbolt got bit by something and passed out. I grabbed as much supplies as I could carry and we galloped here as fast as we could.” The white maned pony looked exhausted. I remembered it taking all day to get here; had she ran the whole way? Rose had gone all the way to Marefield and back. How long was I out?

I glanced back to Deadbolt. “What about Deadbolt?”

“Don’t worry about him, the anti-venom I gave him is working. I almost didn’t have enough for the both of you.”

Rose helped me sit up. “I was worried we had lost you for a minute.”

Breathing was still hard, each deep breath I took hurt my chest. “My chest hurts”

.“Your heart had stopped.” Daisy’s voice was anxious. “Not for long, but we nearly lost you, Rivet. The anti-venom had started to make its way through your system but the poison must have already taken a heavy toll on you.”

I rubbed my neck, and winced when I felt the spot Daisy had jammed a needle into it. Looking around again, I noticed I Steadfast wasn’t under the wagon with us. “Where’s Steadfast?”

“He’s trying to fix the other wagon, I doubt your gonna be able to walk for a little bit. The poison did a number on your nervous system. You’ll be fine, but its going to take a while for you to get back full motor control. You should try to get some rest until we’re ready to move you two.”

Sleeping was really not something I wanted to do. After being in that darkness, I just wanted to be near other ponies. It was a feeling I had never had before. But I was tired, incredibly tired. I wasn’t even the one who had to run all night to save my ass. I guess dieing takes a lot out of you.

“Thanks Daisy...”

She shook her head. “Don’t be thanking me. Rose is the one who brought me here. If it wasn’t for her I wouldn’t have known you guys were in trouble.”

I turn my head to look at Rose. She was already asleep. She must have been exhausted. Now that she knew Deadbolt and I would be fine she finally dozed off.

Daisy nudged me. “She’s kinda cute when she’s asleep huh?”

“Yeah.” I answered before I thought. I looked over at Daisy, I could already feel the blush of embarrassment on my cheeks. “I mean...um...a...It just...ah.” The more I stammered the worse my face heated up, so I shut up.

She just gave me a sly look. “Alright, I’m gonna go help Steadfast with the wagon. You get some rest.”

I wanted to try and shift around to get a bit more comfortable, not like that was very likely with the wet ground and my achy body, which was still far from responsive. Despite my discomfort, I did manage to fall asleep. It seemed unfair to make Daisy and Steadfast do all the work, but I doubt I would be much help to them right now.

Steadfast and Rose loaded us into the back of the wagon. It was a humiliating process. Neither Deadbolt or I could stand on our own, let alone climb into the carts. Rose’s grip slipped when they lowered me down; my head hit the cart with a thud.

“Ow!” I tried to sound as annoyed as possible.

“Whoops! Sorry Rivet.”

For once I was on the same wavelength with my brother. All he did was complain as he was lifted in. His stubbornness in trying to get in himself only ended up embarrassing himself. He had almost managed to lift the top half of himself in but quickly slid out and landed face first in the mud.

“Ya’know if you two were a little more careful, maybe you wouldn’t need to be lifted into a wagon in the first place.” Daisy teased from the side as the others hopped off the wagon.

“Hey, I'm not the one who tripped and alerted a horde of poisonous dogs.” Deadbolt yelled at her, while glaring at me. 

“What? The rocks were slipperier than I thought. And how was I supposed to know they were poisonous?” It was an accident, one that almost got us killed, but still an accident.

He rolled his eyes and looked the other way.

“Alright, you guys ready to head back to Marefield?” Steadfast had strapped himself into the harness that the Brahmin would normally be in, ready to pull the wagon back to town.

“Yep, they’re good to go.” Daisy said and we started moving.

Rose and Daisy walked behind the wagon while Steadfast pulled.

Deadbolt sighed. “Well, as long as we’re here we might as well finally talk about what our plan is.”

“I already know what the plan is. We’re heading up to Trottingham as soon as we can.” Steadfast said we might be able to find some information about Y34RK in the old Stable-Tech building up there. I planned to at least check it out.

“Oh really? Is that the plan? What happens when those ponies in the robot suits show up again?” Deadbolt was clearly against anything that had to do with the data chip in my Pip-Buck. “I still say get rid of the damn thing, Rivet.”

“I told you, I'm finding out what it is first. Besides, if they are tracking us by our security tags , they’re going to find us regardless of if we have the chip or not. What happens when they do find us and we don’t have it? They’ll kill us on the spot, Deadbolt, at least if we have it we might be able to negotiate.” I was getting sick of Deadbolt. He refused to think of alternatives. I need to find out what Y34RK is. Maybe then we could figure out what the best thing to do with it was.

“I'm just trying to make sure we don’t get ourselves killed. We need to think this through before we go out into the wasteland alone again.” Deadbolt, looking out for “our” safety, I called bullshit.

“You’ve never given a shit about what happened to anyone but yourself. Least of all me, your own brother!”

He glared at me, I think if either of us could move this might have turned into a hoof-fight. “You know what Rivet? You're right, I didn’t fucking care when we were in the Stable. In fact, I didn’t want anything to do with you. But things have changed now, we’re not in the Stable and we have ponies looking for us that want nothing more than to gun us down for that damn chip! I don’t like you, Rivet, but I’m stuck with you, so I would appreciate it if you would not get me killed.”

“Will you two stop arguing!” Rose snapped, turning both our heads in her direction. “All you two do is argue. Just make up your minds. Are we just going to hide out until they give up on us? I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon, Deadbolt. Going to Trottingham will give them a chance at us though, Rivet, but so did coming out here in the first place. I want to find out what the chip is too okay? But DeadBolt’s right; we need to be careful. We’re going to Trottingham, but we need to be ready just in case. Now, stop arguing like little foals!”

Deadbolt and I glanced at each other, then back to Rose. She was staring us down, angry. She was right, all we did was argue. Back in the Stable we would get into shouting matches all the time and out here I didn’t see that changing. We both mumbled something along the lines of “Yes, ma’am” and turned away like scolded foals. She may have been on my side but she was still yelling at me as much as Deadbolt. If not a little more.

“None of that's gonna matter until you guys can walk again. Frankly, I'm not sure how long that's going to take. I’ve seen poisons like that take anywhere from a day or two, to a few months to get full mobility back. So any plans to leave are on hold until you’re back on your hooves.” Daisy was right. I was starting to be able to move a bit more easily but I had no idea how long it would be before we could leave.

Steadfast thought it would be best if we didn’t stop for a break. It was getting dark and the rain had mostly cleared before we started the trip back. It was still sprinkling but it wasn’t bitterly cold and miserable anymore. We ate on the way. It was aggravating how much effort it took to lift my hoof to my mouth to eat, even more so to sit up in the wagon. I had to have Rose help me sit up and opted to use magic to hold my food, the concentration game me a headache but it was still easier.

The trip back took significantly longer than the original trip had. Deadbolt and I rode mostly in silence; neither one of us wanted to talk to the other right now. Daisy and Rose kept chatting between themselves for most of the trip and Steadfast would occasionally toss back a joke about whatever they were talking about. I tried not to listen; I wanted to be somewhere other than next to my brother, though, I guess neither us would be nearly paralysed if it wasn’t for me. Hell, he wouldn’t be here if I didn’t push him to come with us.

“Sorry.” I mumbled.

“What?” Either he didn’t hear me, or me apologizing was a shock to him.

“I’m sorry. It’s my fault we’re out here. It’s my fault you came with us and it’s my fault we’re in this sorry state. If I had been paying a little more attention neither of us would have been bitten by those things.”

He was silent. I think he was trying to tell whether or not I was being sincere. He gave me a nod and a grunt that was basically a thank you.

Marefield was a welcome sight. The glow of lights in the streets and windows greeted us as we neared the town. It reminded me of the first time I had seen the town a few days ago. 

The gates opened with the familiar glow of the unicorn guards that worked the night shift. Daisy decided to take the wagon from Steadfast; he was the only one who hadn’t gotten any sleep and was getting ready to fall over by the time we cleared the gates.

Stepping out of the wagon was a feat that I wasn’t sure I could handle. Falling out of the wagon is one I accomplished as gracefully as a hammer falling off a toolbelt. That was the easy part, now I just had to make it into the Rest-Stop, walk over to the bed, and climb into that bed without embarrassing myself further.  That didn’t exactly happen.

What ended up happening was Deadbolt and I being practically dragged to bed. I could feel the effects of the poison wearing off but it was gradual at best, and standing on my own accord was hard enough, let alone walking. Deadbolt was faring better than me; he could at least take a step on his own every minute or two.

Daisy and Rose helped us into the beds and put our bags into the lockers.

“You guys are doing a lot better than I thought.  I bet you’ll be good to go in a day or two. I'll come by and check on you in the morning.”

Two days was too long for me. We finally had a destination and I was eager to get going. There wasn’t much I would be able to do about it though. I tried to go to sleep that night but between with all my thoughts swimming in my head, wanting to leave, thinking about the Organization and what they wanted with the chip, and remembering the darkness that I had been trapped in, I wasn’t getting any sleep any time soon.






Footnote :Level-up: New Perk added: Poison Resistance Rank 1: You are now 15% less susceptible to natural poisons and animal toxins.


> chapter 4: The Road To Trottingham
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The last three days have been miserable. Not only could I barely move, but both Rose and Daisy decided to make fun of the temporary cripples. Daisy is a great doctor, but her bedside manor needs some serious work.

Her and Rose had been spending a lot of time together while Deadbolt and I recovered. Apparently Rose thought it would be a good idea to get some tips on how to treat injuries. Given that within a week I was hospitalized twice, I agreed with her. If we weren’t going to have a doctor around we should at least know how to fix ourselves up a little.

Steadfast decided to drop in on us once or twice as well. He had noticed I had been gathering multiples of the same pistol and showed me how to use parts from one to improve the other. 

“You're not half bad at this.” the grey pony said, watching me tear apart the pistols and reassemble them with my magic. It was a tedious process. I would examine each piece before deciding on which was better. One would might be slightly rustier than the other or look more worn and used.

I could finally focus magic again without getting a headache. Not being able to levitate objects at will was something I really didn’t want to have to get used to.

It had been a gradual process but I was back to almost full mobility. My muscles didn’t ache nearly as much anymore, hell, I could actually walk around now. We would be getting ready to head out soon.  

“Well, I did fix things for a living back in the Stable.” I said as the parts floated into place. I decided to only use the best two of the pistols for parts. I was going to sell the the last one.

I placed my horn onto the newly repaired pistol. I focused my magic into one of the few spells I knew. I wasn’t great with magic, but I did know a few spells. Though most of them barely worked and the others were practically useless.

The small bits of rust on the gun started to fade, not a lot, but it would still improve the quality of the pistol and make it more reliable. 

Steadfast looked at the gun curiously. “Now that is an interesting spell.”

I was panting, even that spell, which barely affected the gun took a lot of energy for me to use. “Thanks, I’ve only ever used it a few times. Mostly on old water pipes.” 

“Hmm, that could be kinda useful out here. Oh! almost forgot.” He grabbed his saddle bag and started rifling through it. “A little gift, figured you might need it” He laid out three pairs of rough, brown clothing. “Leather, its not the best, but it’ll protect you a bit more than that stable barding. Found it on the caravan when we went back to clear out those nasties in the cave.”

Steadfast had lead a team of guards out on a quick run to clear out that cave we had tried to hold up in. He wanted to make sure the road up to Trottingham would be safe for caravans and travelers again. We had also not been able to carry everything that the wrecked caravan had, so they were also on a collecting mission.

“Oh, thanks.” I said as I lifted the light armor up to look at it. It wasn’t a fully body suit like my stable barding. It only covered the front half of the body. I guess that was fine though. While I did like my current barding, the issue with the Stable 12 barding was that it was very impersonal and covered ones cutie mark. It never really made much sense to me why you would cover part of you that makes you an individual but I never heard anyone else complain about. “Your just giving us these? Don’t you need them?”

He waved his hoof. “Nah, all of the guards have some sort of protection. While these would be nice to keep as back-ups, I think you guys will need ‘em a lot more than we will.” 

The door creaked open. Deadbolt had gone out to sell everything we had that we didn’t plan on keeping with us. That amounted to his old stable barding, a rusty pistol and some bullets for guns we didn’t have. From the look on his face he had gotten a decent amount of caps for it all. He almost looked content.

“Oh, I meant to ask. How’d the hunt go?” I asked, turning my attention back to Steadfast.

Deadbolt glanced over at us but kept walking over to the locker. 

“Went pretty well. Lancer got bit but I had Daisy whip us up some anti-venom before we left. Didn’t let it start to work through his system. Other than that, went off without a hitch.”

“Did you ever figure out what those things were?” Deadbolt asked as he walk back over to us.

“Yeah, Dusk said he'd seen ‘em before. Apparently some kind night stalker variation. But we cleared them out of that cave. The main road to Trottingham should be relatively safe again.” The charcoal maned pony explained.

“Speaking of which, we’re leaving first thing in the morning.” 

Deadbolt took a seat. “When did you decide this?”

Steadfast sat forward in his chair and gave me a questioning stare. “You sure you’re up to traveling yet?” 

“Yeah, I think we’ll be fine to get moving.”

He didn’t drop his stare. “What about if you get into a fight, or need to run for some reason. Do you think you’ll be able to handle that? A few days ago you couldn’t even walk.”

I sighed. “Steadfast, we’ll be fine. Deadbolt and I are both pretty much fully recovered. I figure by tomorrow morning we’ll be good enough to head out.  Besides we’ve been in your manes for too long. We need to get moving along.” 

The guard shrugged. “Alright, if you think you can handle yourselves i'm not gonna try and stop you. But Daisy will, and you know it.” 

That made me chuckle. He was right, Daisy has been trying to convince us to stay for the last two days and I doubt she’ll stop trying until we’ve already left.

“Do you know how to get to the Stable-Tech building?” 

I gave him a nod. “Yep, marked it on my Pip-Buck. It’ll lead us straight there.”

He leaned back again. “Theres a trader settlement up in Trottingham, you should make a stop there while you're in the city. Its called Junction 26. Its a bit farther into the City than the Stable-Tech building, just follow the main road and you can’t miss it.”

Just as he said that, a little blip appeared on my Pip-Buck, marked Junction 26. I didn’t even know the exact location, how the hell does it?

“We’ll be sure to do that, thanks again Steadfast.”

“I should get going, I’m on duty in a bit.” He stood up and strapped his rifles on. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” 

As the door closed behind Steadfast, Deadbolt turned to me. “Where you even going to ask Rose or I if we were ready to go?”

“Deadbolt, no matter how long we stay here you're going to say that you're not ready to leave. As for Rose, yeah... I probably should have asked.”

The Brown unicorn rolled his eyes.

“Did you find anything useful at the shop?”

He shook his head. “I checked before I went out, we’ve got plenty of ammo from the caravan left. Daisy gave Rose some healing bandages and we’ve still got a couple of healing potions. All I picked up was some food and water.”

Deadbolt was always responsible for keeping inventory. It was part of his job as the head of the maintenance team. Looks like some habits die hard. Either that or maybe he was warming up to the idea of leaving, but I really doubted that.

He pushed himself away from the table. “If we are leaving tomorrow, we should get some rest. Leaving early would be best.”

I nodded. “Thats probably a good idea.”

The rest of the day we spent resting. I wasn’t one-hundred percent yet, but I felt like we needed to get going and I felt good enough to walk at least and Deadbolt seemed fine. We had spent a lot of time in Marefield, even made a few friends here. Who knows maybe if we ever come back we might stay next time. But I had questions and I wasn’t going to find my answers here, it was time to leave. 

“Are you sure theres nothing I can do to convince you to stay?” The yellow pony asked as we approached the gates.

It just after daybreak. The air was still cool from the previous night. Walking in the morning would be a lot easier than it would in the afternoon when it becomes blisteringly hot.

“I’m sorry Daisy, this is something I feel like I need to do. I have to know why.” 

She sighed. “Okay, just take care of yourselves out there. If you're ever in the area, you better stop by sometime.” 

Steadfast was on watch above us on the gate. He gave a wave and the unicorns guards once again opened the gates.

“Don’t worry Daisy I’ll take care of these two.” Rose said as we stepped out of the gates. We gave Daisy and Steadfast a wave as the gates closed behind us. 

I looked down the Road to Trottingham, The horns blocked the view of the city. I had yet to actually see Trottingham, even in the distance. All I knew was that it was somewhere along the road that lead north.

Down the road to the east was Whinney-peg I remember Steadfast saying. Stable 12 was also somewhere down that way. If it wasn’t for my Pip-Buck I doubt I could ever find my way back to it now, not that I was in a hurry to go home. Even if I was, there was nothing left of it to go back to.

I let out a sigh.

“Something wrong Rivet?” Rose asked seeing the solemn look on my face.

“Its nothing, lets get going.” 

We made our way down the desolate road. Occasionally, I would look back to Marefield slowly shrinking in the distance. I’m pretty sure I could see Steadfast on top of the gates. He was probably making sure we didn’t manage to get ourselves killed while we were still in eye shot of Marefield.

It was a nice day out. Beams of light broke through the cloud layer above us. Even the view of the wasteland wasn’t so bad when it was bright out. Though the occasional dead trees and piles of rubble did their best to make it look as miserable as possible. 

I was right about the heat. The sun quickly rose, making it hotter by the minute. We stopped more frequently to have a drink and cool off in what little shade we could find. 

We weren’t making as good of time as we had when Steadfast was leading us ahead. Thats probably do to our inexperience with traveling, the fact that I was still a little stiff feeling and our frequent breaks. Deadbolt seemed fine now, but he shows emotion and distress as well as a brick. 

“Deadbolt, you’ve been quiet today.” 

He gave me a slight glance. “I've been wondering about something.”

I shot him a confused look, but he didn’t bother to look back at me. Instead he took my silence as a hint to continue. “We haven't seen or heard anything from the organization in almost a week. I wonder what they’re up to. If they do show up again, we’re not equipped to handle those suits.”

He was more thinking out loud than actually asking my opinion on the situation, but he was right. We didn’t have any powerful weapons. All we had was a couple of small pistols, and a knife, I doubt any of those were going to be enough to punch through those thick metal suits. The shotgun I had was probably the only thing that would even phase them. It was in much better condition than the one I had used back in Stable 12 but I didn’t like the idea of getting close enough to them to use it, and even if I did, there was no guarantee it would do anything.

“I’m sure we’ll think of something. We got away from them once, we can do it again.”

He turned on me. “No Rivet, they gave up on chasing us once. If they would have tried i'm sure that we wouldn’t have gotten away from the Stable. You shouldn’t count getting lucky as a victory, especially when all that victory got us was being thrown out into this hellhole.” He waved a hoof around to the nearly barren surroundings, then turned back and kept walking. “you’ve nearly died twice already Rivet, if possible I would like to not have to keep being lucky and actually find a way to protect ourselves.” 

Deadbolt actually sounded concerned for me. To his credit I did almost die once, I wouldn’t count the infection I had in my leg as that close of a call. Daisy did say my heart had stopped after that Night Stalker thing bit me though, so I guess technically I did die once already.

“Deadbolt’s right Rivet, we can’t just hope that we’ll be able to avoid them forever.” Rose said giving me a worried look. “Frankly, I doubt we’ll be able to avoid them at all out here.”

I shrunk down like a foal being yelled at. I was just trying to lighten the mood a bit. I didn’t expect to get a lecture on how likely we are to die. I decided that it would probably be best if I just shut my mouth and keep walking. 

Looking out at the surroundings. I noticed the land was a lot flatter than I previously thought. Other than a few shallow hills, you could see for miles. A sandy brown and grey field stretching as far as you can see. Only being blocked by a few dead trees and The Horns mountains in the distance.

I could see why Steadfast was so worried about the trade line before. I doubted anything would ever be able to grow here. Maybe at one point the area might have been more habitable, but the mega spells that hit the area must have irradiated the soil beyond repair.

I paused in the road. Something had caught my eye. I had seen it before on our way up to The Horns but didn’t have time to check it out. It was the Ferrum Technologies building, the sign may have been hard to read but my Pip-Buck had labelled it for me. I couldn’t help but be a little curious about it. The building was the only one in sight and wasn’t like any of the houses back in Marefield. 

“What are you doing?” Rose asked looking back at me.

“I’m gonna go take a look.”

Deadbolt sighed. “Why? Its just an old building. We need to keep moving.”

“Just a quick peak.”

Rose took a long look at the half crumbled building. “Really Rivet? The place is falling apart.”
“It’ll be fast. In and out, I promise.”

They both sighed in unison. “Fine, lets make it quick.” Rose sounded about as excited as Deadbolt was about anything.

The north side of the building had collapsed in on itself but the rest of building seemed surprisingly intact. At least, it did on the outside. 

The door was stuck, the hinges had rusted shut. It took a few attempts to break the rust and have the door slowly screech open.

On the inside we were greeting by a help desk in a small room. Chairs were scattered all over the room. The one working light flickered and threatened to give up entirely. The help desk had a computer, the soft green glow of the monitor illuminated the back wall.

Sitting behind the desk was a blackened skeleton, still in the desk chair. I slowly pushed the chair away with my magic as I moved over to the terminal, it was still logged in and working. 

There was a message open. It was hadn’t been sent and was only partially written.

To:Swift Pen
From: Sonnet
Subject: Re: Be Home Late Tonight
I just saw a massive explosion coming from Whinniepeg. The News Pony says that the Zebras are attacking. Trottingham might get hit. Are you okay? Please send me back as

Thats all that was written. I closed the message. Looking back at the skeleton, I saw it was a mare. She must have been typing when a bomb hit nearby. 

I sifted through the messages on the terminal. I found the series with the subject : Be Home Late Tonight.

To:Swift Pen
From: Sonnet 
Subject: Be Home Late Tonight
Hey, sorry I'm gonna be working late tonight. Honcho needs me to finish up some reports. I won’t be home for dinner tonight. I’ll try not to wake you up when I get home.


To: Sonnet
From:Swift Pen
Subject: Re: Be Home Late Tonight
Again? I thought we were going out tonight. Theres no way you can do them in the morning? You’ve been working late almost every night. I barely get to see you anymore.


To:Swift Pen
From: Sonnet
Subject: Re: Be Home Late Tonight
I asked but Honcho said he needed them done ASAP. We’ll go out tomorrow night, I promise. I’ll probably be here past midnight. So don’t wait up for me. I’ll see you in the morning.

I powered down the terminal. I had seen skeletons before, they were all over the wasteland. I had dismissed most of them. Knowing this one had a family, I don’t know, It made it seem like was actually a pony and not just some piece of gruesome scenery.

“you okay Rivet?” Rose asked seeing me staring at the skeleton.

I snapped out of my solemn daze. “Huh? Oh right, yeah, yeah i'm fine. Lets take a look around.”

Two hallways extended out of either side of the room. The on the right was labeled “Factory” on the left side said “Offices.” The hallway leading to the factory portion of the building was blocked off by some of the ceiling that had come down.

The other hall was dark, most of the lights didn’t work anymore and the few that did flickered and could give out any time now. It looked like no one had set hoof in the building for years. A thick layer of dust covered everything.

Looking through some of the offices, we found that they were mostly empty. Papers were scattered among most of them. Filing cabinets were either toppled over or the the drawers refused to open.

We searched all of the offices we could, a few were blocked by large pieces of rubble. As we approached the end of the hall a red light popped up on the EFS.

“Whoa, hold up.” I whispered. “Theres something over there.”

The light was moving quick, it was close. It approached the corner and paused.

I drew my pistol.

A Radroach scurried around the corner. As soon as Deadbolt saw it he burst out laughing. 

“You were afraid of a little roach.” He said chuckling and walking over to the roach. He sent his knife through it with a loud *Shlink* , then scraped off the bits of roach on the wall.

Rose tried to stifle a laugh.

“Oh, come on. How was I supposed to know it was just a bug?”

She tried to regain her composure. “Sorry Rivet, but it was pretty funny.”

Groaning at her, I walked around the corner that the roach had come from. There were some stairs leading up.

After looking in the first office on the floor, I was suddenly less confident about the integrity of the floor. I opened the door and found that the entirety of the office was now on the ground level. 

“I think this place was looted a long time ago Rivet.” Deadbolt said walking up the stairs. “I did find a few caps in one of the desks, but thats about it.”

Rose followed close behind him “Yeah, theres not much here. We should get going.”

“Alright, just a quick look on this floor then we’ll go.”

I took some passing looks into the remaining offices, just to see if there was anything interesting. One caught my eye. A rather large office with a big desk in the middle, and in the back, a nice little blue safe.

“Hey Deadbolt, come look at this.” I said trotting into the room.

I got about halfway across the room when the floor started to creak and groan under me. I realized what was about to happen about a half second before it actually did.

The floor gave out from under me. I spun and braced myself before slamming into the first floor.

“Rivet! are you okay?” Rose yelled down to me.


“Yeah, I’m fine. I’ll just lay here for a minute.” I groaned as I slowly sat back up. “Hey Deadbolt, see if you can get that safe open.” I brushed the bits of rock and dust off me as I sat up. It wasn’t a long fall but my back still didn’t appreciate it.

I slowly stood up and took a glance around the room. It was an interior office, no windows and all of the lights had gone out. other than the glow of another terminal it was almost completely black. The door was blocked on the outside by some rubble. After trying to push it away a few times I gave up. I was going to need some help with it.

Walking back to the center of the room to see how Deadbolt was doing with that safe I tripped. 
*Crack!*

My horn slammed onto the desk in the middle of the room.

“Fuck!” I was the only unicorn I knew that managed to hit his horn every time I fell.

I nearly jumped out of my skin when I saw what tripped me. A dried corpse of an earth pony stallion laid dead in the room. His eyes were rotten through and maggots swarmed on him. His fur had fallen out long ago, leaving behind a grey and green layer of skin that pulled tight over his bones. He wore a Pip-Buck on his right foreleg, the rotting skin had fused around it.

I scrambled and kicked the body away. My heart raced for a moment before I realized he was dead.

“What was that?” Rose called from the office above me.

Panting trying to catch my breath I yelled back to her. “Its nothing. The door is blocked by some rubble.” 

There was a loud click and I heard the sound of metal scraping on metal as the safe door swung open. “Got it.” Deadbolt shouted as he checked the contents. “What the hell?” 

“What's in it?”

“A couple of grenades.” He paused “Why the hell would an office worker need grenades?” 

“How should I know? Anything else?”

“Some caps and a box of something called cigarettes. What the hell is a cigarette?”

Rose peered down the hole in the middle of the room. “Okay, hold on a second Rivet. We’ll see if we can clear the door. Just hold tight.” She motioned for Deadbolt to follow her and they disappeared.

“Um, okay. I’ll just wait here then.” They were already gone. 

I always thought it was strange how time seemed to slow to a crawl when there was nothing to do, and Rose and Deadbolt seemed to really be taking their time.

The room was nearly pitch-black. I couldn’t help but think about floating around in that darkness again. It send a shiver down my spine whenever I thought about that.

Stepping around the corpse, I sat down at the terminal. It was logged out, but still functioning. I knew enough about computers, I could probably break into this. It wouldn’t be the first time I had done so. I tried to learn how to hack into computers back in Stable 12 to annoy Deadbolt by changing his password occasionally. Though the one time I actually had a chance I ended up locking him out. It didn’t take him long to figure out it was me.

My magic encompassed the keyboard and I went to work. I might be in here for a little while so I might as well try. I almost locked it out on my first attempt. I shut it down and powered it back on. That reset the attempts I had. I got it on my second try. The password was “Dawn”

The screen broke away and a few files popped up. They were audio logs. Some of them were corrupted and wouldn’t open.

I played the first one.

“Engineering log, Chief engineer Ratchet reporting.” 

The voice was a stallions. He was gruff and seemed annoyed.

“One of the magical generators is leaking radiation. We had to shut down the factory today. A few ponies and I will be staying to fix it tonight. That thing is so old though, it would probably be cheaper to replace it at this point then to keep fixing it. Nothing else to report.”

That actually kind of made me chuckle. I had to fix one of the generators in Stable 12 once. It was a long process that took me all day. Though this pony had a team, so it probably wasn’t as big of a task.

“Engineering log, Chief Engineer  Ratchet reporting. Due to recent cutbacks I had to let go half of the maintenance staff. I don’t see why we don’t get rid of some of the paper pushers, we’re the ones who actually make the money here. In addition to that, one of the Gutzy bots had a bit of an incident. It went crazy and buzz sawed the main conveyor belt, thankfully we shut it down before it had a chance to actually hurt anyone. Now corporate wants us to run diagnostics on all of the robots, which means I just lost my weekend We’ll also have to replace the belt before we can start production back up.”

“Engineering log, Chief Engineer  Ratchet reporting. I am getting real sick of this shit. It seems like every other day something goes wrong.”

I was starting to get the impression that this pony didn’t really like his job.

“Today my best mechanic quit. Said he wanted to spend time with his family while he could. Dumbass thinks the Zebras are going to actually win the war. The diagnostics came up with nothing on any of the robots, including the Gutzy that tore the conveyor. Just to be safe we decommissioned that one and now corporate is refusing to pay for a new one. If anyone actually listens to these, please tell the higher-ups to go fuck themselves.”


“Engineering log, Chief Engineer  Ratchet reporting. That damn generator is on the fritz again. Its not leaking radiation but its barely running and most of the machines aren’t getting enough power to run at max capacity. Were going to try to... What the hell was...” 

There was a loud rumble and the recording burst into static. One more recording was left.

There was the sound of something steadily clicking, it sounded similar to my Pip-Bucks Geiger counter. “I don’t know if anyones going to get this.” He sounded distressed and I could hear his labored breathing. “There was an explosion, I don’t know what, but it shook the building. It must have been too much for the generator, because it finally blew. Fucking thing brought down half the building.” 

He let out a coughing fit. “Fuck... thats blood. The doors blocked, I can’t get it open. Radiation is pouring in, I already used up my emergency supply of Radaway. If this reaches corporate, send help. There may be some others trapped in here too.” 

He hacked and gagged, then spit. “Please hurry. I don’t think I’ve got a lot of time left.”

Again, I found myself staring at a corpse. These ponies were just having average work days when the bombs dropped. It didn’t seem right that they ended up as casualties in a war that didn’t even involve them. 

A pounding outside the door ripped me away from my thoughts. “Rivet! can you hear me?” Rose called from outside.

I rushed over to the door. “Yeah.”

“Okay on the count of three, try to push the door open.” Deadbolt called in. “One...Two...Three!”


I slammed myself into the door, pushing. Rose and Deadbolt tried to pull the rubble away at the same time on the other side. It was heavy, I could see how Ratchet wouldn’t have been able to move it on his own.

“Okay, it moved a little. One more time. One...Two...Three!” 

Again I pushed as hard as I could against the door. Slowly It opened enough for me to squeeze out.

“There, can we get out of here now?” Deadbolt said catching his breath.

I nodded. “Yeah, lets get out of here.”

It didn’t seem like we had spent that much time inside, but it had started to get dark. We only had an hour or two of light left before we would need to stop for the night. We picked up the pace, we wanted cover as much ground as possible. There was no way we would be making it to The Horns before nightfall, but I was actually okay with that. I really didn’t want to camp out near that cave,even if Steadfast had cleared it out, it just made me kind of nervous thinking about it.

We stopped for the night and started a fire. The days out here were hot and draining, the nights were cold and harsh. We huddled around the fire eating. Outside the circle of light of the fire was nearly pitch black.

“you know, Deadbolt, you never told us where you learned to pick locks.” Rose said as she took a bite of an apple. 

He glared at her. “Yeah, and I never will.”

“Oh come on, you're going to have to tell us eventually.” I said levitating a piece of rad hog over the fire.

“No.” He said flatly

“Why not?” Rose pushed.

“Just no.” 

Rose tossed her hooves up. “Fine, be that way.”

I chuckled at Rose, she had temporarily given up but within a few minutes she would be right back at it and keep asking him until he told her. But Deadbolt held firm and refused to talk about it.

To my surprise I actually slept really well that night. I did wake up once or twice but it was a relatively peaceful night and weirdly, probably one of the best nights I had since leaving the Stable.

We got up early in the morning, I was actually feeling completely rested for once. So far everyday out here I would either wake up stiff and sore or just plain wouldn’t get any sleep.

We would be passing through The Horns before noon if we made any decent time. The fire had died out sometime while we slept. It was still smoking a bit so it couldn’t have been out for long. We quickly ate breakfast, a few pieces of tasteless fruit and some irradiated water, packed up to head out. It was going to be another long day of walking.

Looking at The Horns again, I could kind of see how they resembled unicorn horns. The spiral on the started at the top and wound down almost to the bottom.  They were very rough and jagged horns but I could see how someone might make the comparison. 

“How far is to Trottingham?” Rose asked as we approached the mountains. 

“I think we might be able to see it when we clear the pass.” I said checking the map on my Pip-Buck. It was still a long walk.

The sheer cliff faces of the pass were a lot different in the light. The red rock walls seemed to sparkle as the light hit them. It added to the illusion of them being “Horns.” It also helped that the broken wagons and dead brahmin had been cleared out. It made traveling through a lot nicer.

I brought up my EFS as we approached the cave we stayed in. I trusted Steadfast had cleared it out, but theres no harm in being careful. Also, I really didn’t want to be bit by one of those things again.

As we made it to the exit of the pass we got our first look at the Trottingham area. While it wasn’t drastically different than what we had seen to this point, it was unfamiliar territory. The dead trees we had seen were much more abundant in the area. Far in the distance I could see what looked like a large forest. It was noticeably cooler this side of the horns, maybe the mountains blocked some of the cooler air from getting into the area around Marefield.

We finally got a look at our target. Far in the distance, tall buildings protruded out from the horizon. Even from here I could tell, Trottingham was a fairly large city. Especially compared to the quaint town of Marefield. Not too far from the city, a mountain range stretched across the land.

I sighed, I was hoping that Trottingham would be a lot closer. That The Horns just blocked it from view and we would be able to get there within a few hours. That was not the case.

Just past The Horns was a large billboard. On it was a the massive face of a pink earth pony. “Pinkie Pie is watching watching you...forever.” was written in large letters.

“Thats really creepy.” Rose remarked at the large face.

I didn’t disagree, there was something about it that was imposing. The eyes of the mare seemed to follow us as we passed.

“Ministry Of Moral...” I read aloud. “This is supposed to raise moral?”

We passed the sign. I couldn’t take my eyes off the pink mare. I shuddered after the face disappeared from my sight.

It was around noon when we past The Horns. We were making much better time than we had yesterday. I’ll admit that was partially my fault. It was much cooler though, which meant we didn’t need to take as many breaks. The clouds had started to darken a bit since we set out this morning. If it was going to rain it would still be a while.

The Trottingham area didn’t seem quite as unforgiving as the surroundings of Marefield did. There was much more vestigation around here. That vegetation was still just the dead trees and bushes we had seen before, but there was much more of them. The ground had changed from the sandy-brown of marefield to a dull grey. 

We passed more billboards as we continued to Trottingham. One for some kind of drink called Sparkle-Cola and another for The Trottingham Museum of Medical Science. The Former showed a large bottle of soda. The latter simply showed the building, but it also was covered in graffiti depicting genetals and had a large “FUCK YOU” written on it.

We found a sign and a little side road. The sigh was for a diner called SlapJack’s. Which was pretty good timing, because I was starving. I knew there wouldn’t actually be anyone still working there but we had been walking a few hours and needed to take a break and it wasn’t far from the main road.

It was small place. The building was yellow, or at least it used to be. Most of the paint had come off leaving a grey shell. A sign on top the building Read SlapJack’s Flapjacks. A few tables outside had been toppled over.

A red light appeared on the EFS. 

“Shit.”

“What is it?” Rose asked as I stopped.

“Shh, wait here.” I moved slowly, trying to approach as quietly as I could. More lights began to show up.

“Fuck off with that.” I heard someone yell from inside.

“Completely serious, the bitch fucking blew herself up. It was great.” Another voice answered.

I drew my shotgun as I pressed against the side of the building. there were four lights inside. I slowly peered up into the window get a look.

Four rubber and bone clad ponies sat around the diner.“Raiders.” I whispered to myself. I slipped around the back of the building.

“I gotta take a leak.” one of the raiders said and opened up the back door. He took a quick glance and spotted me.

I froze for a moment. It seemed to take a minute for him to register me, because he stared for a good second or two.

“What the fuck!?” He said as reached for his gun.

*Bang* I blew a hole in his chest before he could raise his weapon.

The lights inside burst into action and scattered. 

*Bang* The glass next to my head shattered as shot whizzed by making me duck below the window. 

I heard the sound of Rose’s revolver as her and Deadbolt ducked behind some of the tables around front.

Another pony darted out of the back door. 

*Bang* The shot missed as he flew by.

His knife swung in his magic. The knife felt like fire as it slashed across my chest leaving a burning gash.

“Gah!” I screamed as I swung the back of the shotgun at him.

*crack* The butt of the gun made contact with his head and he staggered back giving me enough time to pull out my pistol.

*Bang,Bang,Bang* I shot as fast as I could at him. The first two shots missed as he regained balance and lunged again. The third hit his leg and he tripped, falling behind me.

I turned and slid into SATS. His knife was slowly lifting back into the air.

*Bang,Bang* I sent two shots into his head from point-blank range. 

I moved to the door. The other two ponies were focused on Deadbolt and Rose out front. Reloading the shotgun I moved in and made my way behind the counter.

I stood up to fire when I saw something flying through the air. 

“Fuck!” One of the raiders screamed as Deadbolt’s grenade landed between them.

I dropped behind the counter just before *Boom!* the raiders were thrown back, both of them missing a few body parts.

My ears rang as I looked around for more lights.

“I think thats all of them.” I called out to the two ponies hiding behind tables outside. “You two alright?” 

They peered out before walking up to the front door. “Yeah, we’re fine.” Deadbolt said as he took a look around the diner.

“You’ve been cut.” Rose said looking at the bleeding slash on my chest.

“Yeah, but its not deep. I’ll be fine.”

She gave me a stern look. I knew what she was going to say before she said it. “You said that last time, remember what happened then?”

I scratched the back of my head and averted my eyes. “Yeah, but...”

“No.” She said interrupting me. “I told Daisy I would make sure you wouldn’t go around with an open wound again. Sit down and hold still.” She pushed me onto my haunches and slid her saddle bag off, digging through it for medical supplies.

Rose pulled out a healing bandage. Instantly I could feel it going to work slowly closing the wound. It wasn’t as fast as the healing potion Steadfast had given me, but it was still effective at healing the gash. 

The inside of the diner was trashed. It was like that before we got here but Deadbolt’s grenade hadn’t helped the fact. The front door lead to a small dining area with a bar as the front counter. Behind that was the kitchen. Cabinets had fallen over spilling out rusted,old pots and pans. The fridge was the only thing still completely intact, all it had in it was various alcohols.	

Behind the bar were a few ammo boxes. Containing some more shotgun shells and a few bullets that would fit Rose’s revolver. Deadbolt decided to trade out his knife for the one the raider cut me with. His was large with a flat end, the one the raider used was smaller but the end came to a deadly point and had a serrated edge. He gave it a few practice swings before putting into the holster on his saddle bag. 

A few pictures hung on the wall behind the bar, a lot of them had fallen on the ground and had broken frames. A unicorn mare with a pancake cutie mark was in all of them alongside various other ponies. Each picture was signed but I couldn’t make out most the names, either they were too faded to read or the writing was nearly illegible. 

One of the pictures caught my eye. A familiar mare that seemed to be bouncing next to the pony I assumed was SlapJack. Pinkie Pie, along with five other mares who were sitting in one of the booths, were all huddled together with SlapJack in the picture. Each mare had signed it along the edge of the picture. I could only make out two of the names, Twilight Sparkle and Rarity, I could also make out the two Ps in Pinkie Pie’s signature.  

“I gotta say, she looks a lot nicer in this picture.” Rose said looking at the photo. 

“Yeah, kinda hard to believe its the same pony.” I said levitating it off the wall to get a better look. The Diner looked a lot nicer back then. a strip of wallpaper with a pancake design ran across the center of the walls. The booths and table were all still intact. Outside you could see some ponies dining in the pure sunshine, not a cloud in site. The six friends along with Slapjack all sat with wide genuine grins. plates of freshly made pancakes laid on the table in front of the mares.

Looking around now, there was no trace of the wallpaper. Outside was a grey and depressing wasteland. All of the booth’s benches were torn open or smashed completely. There was nopony outside enjoying the weather as they ate. All that was here was us and four dead raiders.

I slide the picture into my saddle bag. 

“What are doing?” Rose asked

“I’m keeping it.” I don’t know why but the picture made me kind of happy. The six friends huddled together all looked so carefree. It wasn’t something I had seen much of, well... ever. Even in the Stable I barely ever saw ponies looking as legitimately happy as the ponies in the picture. 

She shrugged and went back to looking at the pictures decorating the wall.

We all slumped down into one of the booths near a window. I wasn’t really hungry anymore but taking a break still sounded nice. Deadbolt laid out the rest of the Raider’s supplies onto the table. Caps, a couple of worn out, old pistols and a few small orange tablets that my Pip-Buck labeled “Dash.”

Looking out, I could see Trottingham. It was still a ways away. If we didn’t take anymore breaks, we might be able to make it there a little after sundown. I dared a look up at the clouds, they continued to darken but I hadn’t heard any thunder yet. It was getting easier to look up finally. If i did it for too long I would get dizzy but I could at least check out the clouds for a moment before vertigo set it. 

“We should get going.” Deadbolt said looking out at the darkening clouds. “Maybe we can get to Trottingham before the storm hits.”

I nodded. “Yeah, thats probably a good idea.” 

We tossed the things we got from the raiders into our packs and headed out. the knife was the only thing we would actually be using, the pistols were in much worse condition than either my pistol or Rose’s revolver. According to my Pip-Buck Dash had a similar effect as SATS and slowed your perception of time. Sounds like it could be useful in a fight.

It was starting to get late, but I couldn’t quite tell if the lowering light was from the sun going down or from the clouds obscuring it more than normal as they darkened. The first few drops of rain started to sprinkle down. They few and far between but last time we hadn’t gotten too much warning before the downpour hit so I was weary. 

The road ahead of us was mostly clear. The body of a Rad Hog lay on the side of the road. Two large birds sat on top of it ripping small bits off. They flew off as we approached and passed the corpse. Thankfully I hadn’t eaten or else I very well may have had a hard time keeping it down.

The city was starting to take shape in front of us. The tall, ruined building slowly growing as we approached. Trottingham was almost within reach. The Stable-Tech building was somewhere along the road that bisected the city. If we kept following this road we would be lead right to it. Further in from there would be Junction 26

The rain was slowly picking up, it didn’t come all at once like it had before. The rain made the leather armor uncomfortable as it clung to me. We wouldn’t have time to stop to rest without getting caught out in a downpour before we could find shelter somewhere in the city.  

The entrance to the city was a small bridge. The ground took a sudden dip beneath it. Some strange wagons laid wretched on and passed the bridge. They weren’t like the ones from the caravan though, these were bigger and made of metal and had no wheels. They all had a similiar harness on the front, you could see some kind machinery on the undersides of some of the ones that were flipped over. 

The buildings loomed above us. My vertigo came back when I tried to look up at the massive structures around us. I was actually surprised when my Pip-Buck didn’t pop up with a message about getting to Trottingham. 

We slowed down when we got into the city. Something about the buildings being so close together and being so tall made me nervous. The fact that a lot of them looked like they could come down at any time didn’t help either.

It was dark now, and getting hard to see through the rain. It was starting to come down hard. We needed to find a place to hold up for night.

*BOOM KRRAANG!* A bullet whizzed by and ricocheted off one of the nearby wagons.

“Shit! Get down!.” Deadbolt yelled as we all dived behind the wagons. 

“Fuck! Get em!” Somepony yelled from the direction of the shot.

I pulled up the EFS, red lines swarmed my vision. I drew my pistol, turned around and entered SATS.

I could barely see at least five raiders charging at us.

*BANG,BANG,BANG* I fired three shots at the nearest one, an earth pony wielding a sledgehammer, all three missed.

He dashed up and hit me in the side, knocking the air from lungs. 

I fell to the ground and saw Deadbolt jump on the pony, sending his knife into the pony’s back. 

He ripped it out with a disgusting *shlurk* and the pony dropped.

One of them managed to get around us. A unicorn grabbed Rose and held a knife to her neck. 

Her eyes shrunk to pin-pricks and she started to thrash and scream. 

There was a flash from the corner of my eye and the unicorn’s head exploded. 

Rose was shaking, huddled on the ground. I ran over to her. 
Deadbolt tossed a grenade at the incoming raiders. 

*BOOM!* He landed it right in front of a charging raider, all that was left was a black smear on the pavement.

“Rose are you okay?” I asked as I held and pushed up against a wagon for cover.

She was shaking, I could tears streaming down her face. “I thought...I thought he was going to...” 

Dammit, this is not a good time for this. I stuck my head up and saw a flash from up in a building behind the raiders. *BOOM* blood splattered out of an earth ponies head.

The last raider must have lost his nerve, he took off, galloping as fast as he could at the nearest building. He didn’t make it. 

*BOOM* the same flash, the same result. The pony dropped.

“There's someone shooting from up there!” I yelled to Deadbolt, tilting my head to where I saw the flashed.

“I can’t see him.” He yelled back. I couldn’t either, my EFS wasn’t picking him up from this distance.

I looked over we were near an open building. If we were quick enough we might be able to make it. If we weren't, well, I didn’t want to think about that.

“Rose, do you think you can run?”

She wearily nodded. 

“Okay, we're gonna make a dash for that building, ready?”

She nodded again. I looked over to Deadbolt.

“Lets go.”

We galloped as fast as we could. I didn’t hear any fire.

We dived into the building. He wouldn't be able to get us in here.

“Rose how you doing?”

She was still shaking. “I think i’ll be fine. It’s just that pony grabbed me. I couldn’t help but think back to the Stable, I panicked.I’m sorry.”

I shook my head. “Rose, its okay. I understand.”

She looked up at me and jumped back.

“What?”

“Drop the gun.” Somepony said from behind me. I felt something metal press against the back of my head.

Fuck....

> Chapter 5: The Junction
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


Rose slowly backed away, keeping her eyes locked on the pony behind me. I felt him jab the back of my head with his rifle. 

“I said, drop the gun.” His voice was calm and had a bit of southern accent.

Slowly I levitated the shotgun and the pistol out of their holsters and set them on the ground. The barrel of the rifle bore into the back of my head as I did. 

“You too, lass.” He said swiveling the gun to point at Rose, then back to my head. She hesitated to comply. I gave her a slight nod and she tossed the revolver a few feet from her.

He pushed into my side, forcing me to turn and face Deadbolt. “The knife too.” Deadbolt glared at the pony before drawing his knife and placing it on the ground.

The pressure on my skull eased as he backed up. “Alright, both of you, over there.”

I turned as I moved over to where Deadbolt and Rose stood, turning around to face the pony.  His fur was a light orange with a blonde mane that was done back in a tail.His golden eyes stared us down without blinking He wore a long beige coat that covered most of his body and a desperado hat. He was standing on his hind legs holding a very large rifle with his forelegs.

He held the position surprisingly well. He didn’t move at all, the rifle was fixed perfectly at me. “I’m gonna make this perfectly clear; I would really rather not have to shoot anypony.I just want a few answers, Alright? First off, who are you three?” 

I hadn’t noticed until now, but the E.F.S. didn’t register him as hostile. Instead there was a single white line in front of me. I think I need a new Pip-Buck, this ones being tracked and is registering ponies that hold guns to my head as friendly. Rose and Deadbolt glanced at me. I guess i’m doing the talking here. 

“We’re just travelers. Just passing through.” 

He didn’t buy it and readjusted his aim. “Just travelers huh? Then would you like to explain why there’s power armor looking for you?” 

I jerked up involuntarily at that. How the hell did he know about that?

“What are you talking about?” Deadbolt asked. If I didn’t just give it away that we knew exactly what he was talking about he may have bought Deadbolt’s act. He managed to keep his cool, even though we could be shot at any moment.

“Don’t play dumb with me.” The stallion said slowly. “ Earlier today, I overheard those raiders outside talking with two ponies in power armor. Said that they were looking for three ponies wearing those leg mounted computers you three got, Two unicorn stallions and an earth pony mare. I would say you three fit that description.”

“Looks like they know we’re in Trottingham.” Deadbolt looked between Rose and I.

“Are you going to answer my question or am I gonna have to shoot somepony?” The stallion with the rifle was starting to get impatient.

“Okay, We’re stable ponies.” I blurted out. “A few weeks ago ponies with power armor and raiders attacked our stable. They’ve been hunting down ever since.”

He raised an eyebrow at me. “Stable ponies? What did you do to piss off somepony with power armor at their disposal?”

“They were”

“Rivet!” Deadbolt snapped, obviously thinking that I shouldn’t tell him about the chip.

“Lying isn’t going to get us anywhere Deadbolt.” Rose scolded. “They were looking for something in the stable, they think we have it.”

He cocked his eyebrow. “And do you have whatever it is?”

We were silent for a moment. Which may have just been us saying “Yes we do.”     

He nodded to himself and lowered the gun. “I’m guessing there’s a bit more to this story, but we don’t have any more time for any more questions. Those two weren’t waiting too far off. They probably heard the fighting. We need to get moving.”

“Wait, what?” Rose asked clearly confused.

He shrugged and his cold expression softened. Suddenly he looked incredibly friendly. “What?  I hadn’t actually planned on shootin’ ya. I’ll take you up to the Junction, should be safer to talk there than it is here. Get your things, I’m gonna see if the coast is clear.”

The three of us just stood still for a moment. This pony just had a gun trained on us and now he was going to help us get away from The Organization? I was having a hard time deciding what to think of him.

I retrieved my guns and the pony waved me over. He was leaning against the wall, looking out into the street. “Looks like your friends are here already.”

It was dark and still pouring rain, but I could see somepony moving around where the raiders were laying. I could hear some heavy hoof steps and see a light shimmer off their armor. 

“Useless raiders, they didn’t even manage to get one of ‘em.” One of them called to the other after examining a corpse. His voice was deep and echoed in his helmet.

The mysterious stallion pulled out a large magazine and pushing it into the rifle, cocking it. Wait, did he just hold us up with a rifle that wasn’t even loaded? I chose to table that thought, there was more important things to deal with.

“Hey, I got something over there!” the armored pony closest to us called. They were close enough for my E.F.S to pick them up now. They both started moving in toward us.

I moved back farther into the building.  “We need to get out of here.”

The stallion nodded. “Theres a way out in the back. We’ll take that then drop into the subway. That’ll lead us straight to The Junction.” He pushed off the wall and slung his rifle around his back.

There was a short hallway that lead to an emergency exit. The door had been broken off and laid outside. It lead out to a small alleyway. The buildings were cramped together, leaving little room between them. It was a bit claustrophobic, even when compared to the small corridors of the stable. The main difference being that I could still see the sky, which didn’t make it any better.

We moved quickly. The red lights behind us kept up, obstructed by the buildings and rubble, but they were still close. On the other side of the alley was a long street it was mostly clear. A few of the strange,metal wagons were broken down but not enough to use as cover to run between.

We took off running as soon as we cleared the alley. I have to say, thinking about the situation, I felt incredibly dumb following the pony who had tried to hold us up. With an empty gun no less. Now we were following him through the city, hopping he was actually leading us in the right direction.

“There they are!” I glanced back to see one of the ponies in robot armor coming from the alley. I could hear the sound of his massive machine guns starting to spin, quickly followed by the roar of them firing. Bullets flew around us, one passed through my saddlebag.

The coat clad pony spun around, throwing his rifle around into his hooves. His momentum carried him and he rolled slightly to land on his back as he aimed down the scope.

*BOOM!* a single large bullet case flew from the side of the rifle. Before it even hit the ground he fired a second shot. *BOOM!* 

The first shot hit the pony in the chest and knocked the air out of him. The second hit him square in the head. Which caused him to reel back, temporarily dazed. Neither shot pierced the armor, but both put rather large dents in the thick plates. 

In one motion he swung the rifle onto his back and rolled to his hooves again to keep running. 

The other power armor came running out of the alley. He quickly caught sight of us, ignoring his partner he stood firm, legs spread to brace himself.

*FOOM!* Two large shells came flying from the guns on his sides. The first rocket flew by hitting one of the wagons causing it to explode. Pieces of shrapnel shot in all direction a small bit catching me on the cheek. The second one missed completely, flying far off past us until it hit a building at the end of the street, blowing out a chunk of the outside wall.

Deadbolt was the one to act this time. He spun around and flung a grenade at the pair. Before he could see the results he was back to running.

The grenade flew a little short, but still close enough to stun them both. The one that took the rifle shots fell over from the blast. The other one staggered back trying to stay upright.

The orange stallion skid to a stop over a metal plate in the ground. “Quick get this cover off.” I quickly flipped it open with my magic. He motioned for us to go down as he brought his rifle back around.

*BOOM! BOOM!* The pony with the rocket launchers took a shot in the leg , the force causing to him  trip. The other shot hitting the machine gunner in the shoulder to little effect other than making him grunt in pain for a moment.

Rose was the first down the hole, quickly followed by Deadbolt. 

“You go first, I’ll close it behind us.” I said and the stallion descended without arguing. I grabbed the cover as I slid down, closing it behind me.

I dropped from the ladder and quickly turned to our new friend. “Okay, where do we go from here?”

He looked up at the cover. “Well, I reckon getting that cover off with take ‘em some time. I didn’t see any horns on either of them.” He looked down the tunnel we found ourselves in. 

Train tracks stretched down the center of a concrete tunnel, there was a walkway on either side of the tracks, probably for maintenance workers. A surprising amount of lights were still working, the tunnel for the most part wall well lit. The tracks were torn up and some were coming up off the ground.

“If we follow the tunnel down that way we should come up right at Junction 26.” He explained. 

“Well lets not waste any time then.” Rose said and we started down the path. 

Even down here I could hear the rain as it poured down on the streets above us. I have to say, I kind of liked down there. I may have gotten more used to seeing the sky but having a ceiling was still a very welcome sight.

“I don’t believe you ever told us your name.” Rose pointed out. 

He pursed his lips. “No, I don’t suppose I did. Sorry about that. The names Noble Heart. Most ponies just call me Noble. Always thought Noble Heart sounded a bit pretentious personally.    What about yourselves?” 

“I’m Rose.” She answered “That one’s Rivet and tall ,dark and angry is Deadbolt.”

Deadbolt of course reacted by throwing her an angry stare, which made me chuckle.

“If you don’t mind me asking, why did you decide to help us out?” She continued.

Noble shrugged. “I couldn’t let you get killed by those power armor bastards. In my experience, if you have power armor after you; you're either good ponies or very bad ponies.” 

I wiped a small drip of blood from my cheek. “We’ll I’m glad you did. Don’t know what we would have done without you back there. That was some impressive shooting.”

“So, do you hold up everyone you plan to help?” Rose asked giving Noble a wry expression.

Noble scratched his mane. “Hehehe, yeah, sorry about that whole mess. I knew those goons might show up and I had a few questions I wanted answered before I risked my life for some strangers. Ponies are usually quicker to talk if you put a gun in their face.”

“I suppose so.” She muttered quietly.

The tunnel opened up to a large room. Above us was a platform that stretched across the two sets of tracks that passed through the room. A staircase on both sides of the room led up to the platform. A derailed train had smashed into the far side of the room along the other set of tracks. on the other side of the room the tunnels continued. Above the one directly across from us somepony had painted “Junction 26.”

“Looks like we’re heading the right way.” Deadbolt said as he saw the sign.

Noble  turned to head to me. “You said those ponies attacked your stable?”

“Yeah, a few ponies in power armor tricked the Overmare into letting them in. They came in with a band of raiders. We were the only ones that got out. There was also a pegasus leading them.” I explained.

He shook his head slowly. “Sorry to hear that. What were they looking for?”

I was a little hesitant to tell him about the chip. But if was going to shoot us or turn us over he would have done it by now. “There was a computer chip hidden in the stable.”

“They slaughtered an entire stable for a tiny computer thing? What's it do that they were willing to do that?” He asked.

I sighed. “I wish I knew. Thats why we’re in Trottingham. We were hoping to find that out.”

“The plan was to check the stable tech building thats in the city.” Rose cut in. “We’re going to pass right by it if we go straight to junction 26.”

“Worst part of it, they can track us. If they’re already in Trottingham, we’re going to have a hard time moving around.” Deadbolt said.

Noble sighed. “Sounds like you folks have had it pretty hard. But it could be worse.”

*RRraaahhh* A gargled scream echoed out from the tunnel.

“What the hell was that?” I said stopping and stared down the tunnel.

“Shit, sounds like some ghouls got into the tunnels.” Noble answered

“Ghouls?”

He nodded. “As long as there aren’t too many of them, they shouldn’t be much of problem. Just keep your gun ready.” He reached back and pulled out a pistol. It was a larger caliber than the one I carried and looked like a box with a handle.

I readied my shotgun, making sure that it was loaded. It may only have two shots but in close quarters it would do just fine. Rose and Deadbolt followed suit and equipped their revolver and combat knife respectively. We started down the tunnel again.

This section of the tunnel was in worse condition than the rest of it. Most of the lights were out, making the tunnel nearly black. I had to use my Pip-Buck’s light to see at all. A large section of the wall that divided the adjacent tunnel had been destroyed.

We were silent as we walked. Noble lead us, his eyes were scanning the darkness for any signs of movement. He had to have great vision to be able to see anything in this darkness, without my Pip’s light I wouldn’t be able to see my hoof in front of my face. 

The stench of rotting flesh slowly became more noticeable the farther we went. A piece of the train tracks stuck up from the ground. I didn’t see it and tripped. What I landed on was… Squishy and smelled horribly. It was also breathing. I jumped off of it as fast as I could.  *RRraaahhh!* A ghastly scream came from the creature. 

It spun around to face me. It looked like a pony,except it was hairless and had decaying yellow skin. Its teeth were black and pieces of flesh hung between them. Its eyes were yellow and looked like they could come out of the socket if it wasn’t careful. My mind went back to the corpse of Ratchet.

The zombie pony lunged for me, swiping its hooves and biting at me. It knocked me over and wrestled on top on me. Its snapping jaw was inches from my face. The ghoul’s hooves swung wildly, making it hard to keep him off me.

Noble put his gun to the beast’s head and pulled the trigger. *BANG!*

I pushed the corpse off of me and scuffled to my hooves. “What the hell is that thing?”

“That is a ghoul.” Noble said giving it a light kick.

“It looks like a pony.” Rose said as she covered her nose. The smell of of decay coming off of it was overpowering.

“Thats because it is, er...was.” Noble said as he took a step away from the body.  “Ghouls are ponies who were exposed to large amounts of radiation and didn’t have the good fortune to die. They don’t all go flesh hungry, but most do. We call those ones ferals.”

Deadbolt was looking ahead into the darkness of the tunnel. “Do you think there’s more of them?” 

Noble shrugged. “I don’t know, probably. Ferals usually travel in packs. If there are more they probably heard that. We need to be careful.” He gave me a slight glance as he said the last sentence.

“Can we please just get going. This thing smells awful.” Rose looked like she was going to vomit just from the stench.  Wouldn’t have blamed her if she did.

“Lets see how good you smell when all your skin is rotting off.” Noble said has he started back down the tunnel. It was hard for me to take my eyes off the ghoul until we were pretty far past it and the darkness swallowed it again.

The tunnels were not small. I feel like even somepony who was claustrophobic wouldn’t really mind it too much. It was the darkness that made them so oppressive. We couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of us at any time. That was with the Pip-Buck lights on.

“Any idea how much farther Junction 26 is?” I asked as I scanned around, hoping not to run into any more ghouls.

Noble gestured down the tunnel.  “It’s not much further. We should be coming up to the exit of the tunnel pretty soon. Junction 26 is about a block away from where we should come up.”

Soon enough we could see light at the end of the tunnel. It opened up into another station area. It had the same bridge above the tracks, but was missing the wrecked train. 

Noble’s ears perked up, then he dropped low to the ground. I was going to ask what he was doing but he quickly waved for us to get down and be quiet. It took a second for me to hear what he had. It sounded like very loud chewing and I was pretty sure what was making it.

We slowly made our way to the stairs leading up to the bridge. I peered over the rail to see at least four ghouls huddled over something. A corpse of some unlucky stallion was being torn apart. 

“I guess we know why they didn’t all come running for us earlier. They must have seen that poor guy first.” Noble whispered. 

I watched in horror as the ghouls slowly devoured the pony. They tore the corpse apart, each one taking large chunks of meat out of it with each bite. It wasn’t the first time I had seen a pony being eaten, but I don’t think I was going to get used to seeing it.  I gave a silent thanks to Celestia that it wasn’t any of us down there instead, then focused on not making any noise. I really didn’t want a repeat of the cave.

Once we reached the top of the bridge we started moving a bit quicker. The ghouls didn’t seem to take notice. I watched my EFS as they went out of range. We came to a metal gate that lead to the surface. 

“Deadbolt, help me get this open.” Noble said. “You two watch and make sure nothing comes this way.” The two grabbed onto the side of the gate and pulled. It made a loud clang as it jerked and moved slightly. “Shit, they probably heard that.”

They gave it another hard tug and the gate gave another inch. I faintly heard another one of the ghouls gargled cries. “Um, you may want to hurry with that.” I said readying my shotgun. 

“We’re trying.” Deadbolt grunted.

The ghouls knew we were here now. I could hear them rushing toward us. One cleared the corner in a sprint. 

*Bang* It fell back as my shotgun tore through it. “Seriously, we need to get out of here.”

Another rounded the corner. *Bang, Bang* Rose hit it in the leg, tripping it. It crawled at us as more sprang out behind it.

The gate finally gave and opened with a screech. “Come on!” Noble yelled to Rose and I. We turned and ran for it. Deadbolt and Noble waited on the other side ready to close it as we got out. 

One of them grabbed me as I got to the gate. It bit into my hind leg and pulled me down. “Fuck!” 

*Bang* Noble put a bullet into its head. Deadbolt dragged me out of the gate and the two, along with Rose slammed it shut. The ghouls hit the gate, reaching through with their hooves to swipe at us.

“That was a little close. Will that hold them?” Rose asked as she caught her breath.

“Yeah, I doubt they can open it. You okay?” Noble asked as he helped me up. I just nodded as I stared at the ghouls who desperately wanted to eat us. “Come on, we’re almost there.”

We emerged from the subway. The rain had settled since we went underground. It was still dark but a large glowing sign for Junction 26 eased any worries I had at the time. A wall of metal sheets and wood separated off a city block. Two guards sat at a gateless entrance to town. One was a unicorn that held a strange rifle with a green spiral at the end of barrel and electronics covering the stock. The other was an earth pony with a battle-saddle equipped with a pair of shotguns. We were stopped as we approached.

“Hold up.” The earth pony said and took a few steps toward us. “Is this your first time at Junction 26?”

I gave him a slow nod. “Yeah, first time here.”

“Okay, theres a few rules you need to know. First off, keep your weapons holstered. If we catch you with your weapon drawn we won’t hesitate to fire. Secondly, don’t cause any trouble. If you start making disturbances you will be forcefully ejected from the town. That clear?” 

“Don’t worry fellas, we don’t plan on causing any trouble. We’re just looking for a place to rest for a bit.” Noble said stepping up with a friendly smile.

The guard’s expression didn’t lighten. Instead he stepped to the side. “Alright then. Enjoy your stay.” He waved us in and went back to his position at the entrance.

Noble stopped him. “Heads up, there are ghouls in the tunnels. Also a large section of the lights are out. It’s impossible to see down there.”

The guard nodded. “Thanks for the warning. We’ll have to send someone to fix that and clear them out. Enjoy your stay.” 

Looking up I immediately saw the glowing sign again. It sat on top of a two story building with large windows. Outside of the building was a small lot. A sign at the edge of the lot showed one of those metal wagons we had seen coming into town. Something was written above the picture but someone had sprayed it out and written “clinic inside” on it.

Tents and stands for various merchants sat scattered around the lot. Ponies sat around fires, most looked like they were having a good time either playing cards, drinking or telling stories. 

The wall surrounded more than just the lot and the one small building.  A few nearby buildings were also within it. One of them was a reddish-brown building that stood out from the rest of the grey boxes around it. A small sign someone had posted outside of it said “Hotel.” On the far side of the fence was a large bridge that went over a river that crossed through the middle of the city.

“You're gonna need something for that bite, ghoul bites can be deadly if you don’t treat ‘em. Go to the clinic, get that taken care of. I’ll get us a couple of rooms. Meet me in that building when you're done.” Noble pointing at the hotel. Deadbolt left with him. Rose decided to join me at the clinic.

Inside the small building was mostly comprised of two large rooms. One on both floors. With a few small offices in the back.  The main rooms were sectioned off by curtains. A few doctors were busy helping some injured ponies. 

We were greeted by a white unicorn stallion with a blue mane. He wore a lab coat and levitated a clipboard to his side. “Hello.” He said in a friendly voice. “You need help with something?” 

I turned my leg to show him the bite mark. “I was bitten by a ghoul on my way here. I was hoping you could help me with that.” 

He leaned down and gave it a look. “Yep, not a problem. Just follow me and we’ll get ya’ fixed up.” He turned and trotted over to one of the sectioned off curtains. As he walked there was a metal *ting*. I looked down, under his lab coat I could see his legs. One of them was made of metal. We followed him and I hopped onto the side of the bed. 

He slid his lab coat off and tossed it over a chair. His leg was missing from just under his cutie mark, which was a book with a feather mark sticking out of it. It had been replaced with a robotic one. I did my best not to stare at it.

He pulled out a needle and a few bandages from the desk nearby. “This will just take a minute. By the way, I’m Hermes.”

“Rivet, this is Rose.” I answered. 

“If you don’t mind me asking.” Rose started

“About the leg?” Hermes smiled.

“Yeah, sorry.”

“It’s alright. Lost it about six years ago. I was scavenging for some supplies and stepped on a mine. Thankfully I had some friends nearby. A potion stopped the bleeding but made it impossible to reattach the old leg. Was in Manehatten when it happened. Eventually, I met the Remedium Company, they gave me a new leg. I was so grateful to them. It’s actually the reason I became a doctor.” 

He filled the needle with an antibiotic and injected it just above the bite. He then put some disinfectant onto a cloth and cleaned the wound.

“How’s it been since then?” I asked trying not to wince as he dabbed at the bitemark.

He wrapped some bandages and around my leg and stood back up. “It’s been the best decision I’ve ever made. Now, that should take care of it but if it gets worse come back and see me.” 

“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure he does.” Rose said as she looked at me.

I slowly got off the bed. “How much will that be?”

Hermes shook his head. “No charge here. Remedium Company doctors work for free.”

“How do you make any money then?” Rose asked.

“The Remedium Company just wants to help those who need it. We mostly are sustained by donations. You’d be surprised how many ponies are willing to help keep doctors around. So I do need to ask you donate something, but you don’t have to.” He explained

I shook my head. “No, I want to help out. You helped me, It’s only fair.” I slid my saddle bag off. and took out twenty caps. “Here you go. It’s not a lot but it’s about all we have.”

“Thank you. We also take medical supplies and are willing to trade for them.” Hermes said as he levitated the caps into a box across the room.

“We’ll keep that in mind. Thanks Hermes.” Rose said as she shook his hoof.

“You two going to be in town for long?” He asked as he filled out something on his clipboard.     

“We don’t know yet.” I answered

He set the clipboard down and shook my hoof one last time. “Well if you are, don’t be afraid to drop by.”

I looked back at the other sectioned off curtains. I could see doctors standing around in some of them. “Are all of the doctors here with the Remedium Company?”

Hermes nodded. “Yep, this is the Trottingham Company. We’ve got divisions all over Equestia: Manehatten, Whinneypeg, Trottingham, and New Pegasus,  we also have smaller groups that travel from town to town.”

“That sounds like it can really do some good.” Rose said with a smile.

“We do our best to help anypony that needs it. I need to get back to work. I hope I see you around. Not in here, hopefully.” He quickly added the last sentence

We said goodbye to Hermes and left the clinic to meet back up with Deadbolt and Noble . Rose was right, The Remedium Company sounded like it could do a lot of god for the wasteland. I sure was glad to have them near. I did feel like we should do something to help them out more than a small amount of caps, but we didn’t have much to give.

The inside of the hotel was vastly different than any other building I had seen. It had a soft beige carpet and the red paint on the walls was still completely intact. The lobby had a rows of chairs going along the walls and had a counter on the far side from the entrance. A green earth pony with a mohawk sat with her legs up on the front desk reading some old magazine. When she heard the the door she set it aside to great us. “Hello, you two looking for a room?”

“Actually our friends should already be here.” Rose answered

“Ah, okay, one second.” She said and spun her chair around to look at the wall of keys behind her. “Here we go. third floor, room 305 and 306. The buck in the cowboy hat wanted me to tell you to meet him in 305.” She gave the keys over to Rose and went back to having her hind legs up on the desk.

Rose took the keys and gave her a nod. “Thanks.”

We made our way up to the third floor. Each room had a red door and a small golden plate that numbered them. It didn’t take us long to find 305. As we walked in both Deadbolt and Noble turned their heads to meet us. Deadbolt way sitting on the edge of the bed and Noble was on a chair across the room. The room was actually quite spacious and was equipped with two beds, a large comfy looking chair and a bathroom, though I doubted that the shower in it actually worked. There was also a large window that looked out onto the clinic and the lot below. 

“What are you two talking about?” Rose greeted them.

“Deadbolt here was just telling me about your time in the wasteland.” Noble said leaning back in his chair. “Come on in, we got a few things to talk about.” Noble let Rose take his seat and moved to the window. I took a seat on the second bed.

Deadbolt was the first to speak again. “Apparently the pegasi are in the city.”

“Well they did have those armored suits here.” Said Rose.

Noble stared down at the lot from the window. “It’s a little more that just those two suits. I didn’t think of it before but theres a pegasus that occasionally comes to the Junction, I’m willing to bet that he's working with your pegasi. Though today was the first time I’ve seen their power armor.”

Another pegasus? How many of them are there? “So you're saying it’s just a matter of time before they come here looking for us.”

Noble turned back to us shaking his head. “They might, but I doubt they’d come here looking for a fight. Everyone here has some kind of weapon and the guards will take out anyone who starts firing.”

Deadbolt gave out an aggravated sigh. “Noble was telling me about a slave camp the pegasus owns somewhere north of the bridge. If he is part of The Organization that means we’re closer to them than ever. That is going to make getting around harder.”

“A slave camp? He sells slaves?” Rose said, horrified at the thought. “How can ponies let that happen? They actually do business with someone that sells slaves?”

Noble held up a hoof. “Whoa, slow down Rose. Yes, he does sell slaves. He’s tolerated around here because he has caps and valuable supplies that he's willing to trade. This town was founded by merchants and traders. As long as he doesn’t bring any slaves around here they’re gonna turn a blind eye to it.”

“That’s horrible.” She said as she slumped back into her chair.

Noble simply nodded. “Maybe, but business is business to these ponies. Now, tomorrow  we’re getting you guys something to defend yourselves with. You seemed capable enough in a fight, but you need something to fight those power suits.” Noble crossed the room, stopping at the door. “For now, we should all get some sleep.” 

“Not to sound rude.” I started. “But, um, why are you still helping us? All we’ve done is get you shot at and attacked by ghouls.”

“Well, by helping you I managed to piss off the ponies chasing you. Which may also mean that I pissed off the local pegasus too. As far as I see it, I’m stuck with you guys. At least for a little while. But, there could be worse company. You three seem like decent ponies. Rivet, you and I are sharing the room next door. Rose and Deadbolt have this one. I’ll see you two in the morning.”

I felt bad. I didn’t really mean for somepony else too caught up in our trouble. Though he was the one who stuck us up, then offered to help us. I left the room with him. I was tired and we could talk more in the morning; though there was one question I did want answered. 

“What was your plan earlier? If one of us had decided to just shoot you. Your rifle wasn’t even loaded.” 

Noble stretched his mane. “Hehehe, yeah, I was kinda taking a bit of risk back there. I figured if you saw that I couldn’t have actually shot you, maybe you would be more likely to trust me after the fact. I am sorry about how that went though. Like I said, I really didn’t want to shoot any of ya.”

“Especially because you couldn’t.” I said frankly.  “Thanks for helping us out of that mess. We might not have made it this far without you.”

Noble tossed his hat on the chair and swung his rifle off, setting it next to the chair. “Some ponies are more worth helping than others. You three are still pretty green when it comes to the wasteland. That hasn’t stopped you yet though.” He untied his mane, letting it drop from the tail he wore it in and took off his coat revealing his cutie mark. It was the crosshair of a rifle scope, but frankly, it looked more like a target on his flank.

“That’s an unfortunate cutie mark to have out here.” I joked

“One of the two reasons I wear the coat. It’s amazing how often ponies aim for your ass when it looks like there’s a target painted on it.” 

I chuckled at that. “Two reasons? What's the other one?”

He tossed the coat onto the back of the chair. “It makes me look damn good.” He said as he dropped onto his bed.

I rolled my eyes and  laid my bags on the ground. My armor was still wet, which made it hard to get off. I quickly curled up in my bed. Today was a long day, sleep sounded amazing right about now. Too bad that sleep and I have a love/hate relationship. I love it, but it hates me. Even on one of the most comfortable beds I had ever laid on, I still couldn’t sleep.

I laid in bed for a few hours, but I wasn’t going to get any sleep. My mind was too busy thinking about everything that had happened in the last two weeks. Eventually I decided to take a walk to clear my head. I was careful not to wake Noble as I left.

The hotel was quiet. All the other residents had gone to bed a while ago. I walked down to the lobby, even the green mare working the front desk was gone. Most of the lights had been turned off, leaving the room half lit. I was going to walk around Junction 26 for a bit but the door was locked for the night. Instead I sat in the lobby. It was peaceful down here. Almost no sound other than the ticking of the clock  on the wall.

“Couldn’t sleep either?” Somepony asked.

I snapped out of my thoughts to find my favorite ruby-colored mare. “What are you doing up? I thought I was the only one with insomnia.”

She sat in the chair next to mine. “I couldn’t stop thinking about earlier today. About the fight with the raiders.”

It took me a moment to figure out exactly what she meant. “Rose, that wasn’t your fault.”

“Rivet, I froze. When that raider grabbed me...” She paused. I could see her hooves shaking. “I could only think about what happened in the stable. I thought it was going to happen again.”

I pulled her in and hugged her. Rose’s entire body shook. “Rose, I would never let that happen again.”

It took her awhile to calm down. I sat there hugging her close trying to make her feel a little more safe. I didn’t like to see Rose like this. She was normally strong willed, back in the stable I don’t think I had ever seen her so shaken, she didn’t seem like she could be shaken. It reminded me of her silence after the stable attack. I don’t think I could’ve stood to see her go through that again.

I waited for a few minutes after she stopped shaking to let her go. “Come on, we should really get some sleep.” 

I tried to stand but she stopped me. “Can we just sit here for a little while? I don’t think I’m going to be able to get to sleep anytime soon.”

I gave her a warm smile and sat back down. She leaned her head on my shoulder as we sat in a comfortable silence other than the ticking of the clock.  I glanced up at it. It was past three in the morning.

I turned back to see Rose had fallen asleep on my shoulder. Daisy had said she looked cute when she was asleep. I couldn’t agree more. It was comfortably quiet in the hotel lobby that night. I didn’t want to wake Rose. I ended up staying there for a while longer. Eventually I ended up falling asleep right there as well.

> Chapter 6: Gearing Up
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

    “Well, if I knew you two were gonna spend the night down here I wouldn’t have gotten the second room.”  Noble said, waking me up. 

I rubbed my eyes and tried to remember where I was. I’ve said it many times before, I am not a morning pony.  The hotel lobby was empty other than three of us. The mare who ran the front desk had yet to start her day. 

It took a minute but I finally registered what Noble had said. “Hehe, yeah, sorry about that.”

Rose slowly stirred. “Morning.” she said as she hopped up from the chair she had spend the night in. It did kind of annoy me to see her able to wake up so easily.

“Come on you two. Let’s go get some breakfast.” Noble said as he turned to walk away.

Deadbolt was waiting for us outside. He had gone ahead and bought some food for us and found a place to sit at a table in the main lot. A few hay sandwiches and some dirty water, It was better than nothing, but it did make me miss the always fresh water of the stable. 

“How’s our inventory looking?” Noble asked as he finished his meal. “We need to be thinking about getting you guys some better firepower.”

We all brought out everything we had in our saddle-bags. We didn’t have a ton. My bag had my two guns and a bit of ammo for them, though I was running low on shells for the shotgun, the picture of Pinkie Pie and her friends, three pills of Dash and my Stable 12 barding. Rose had her revolver and ammo along with some healing bandages, two healing potions and thirty caps. Deadbolt had the alcohol from SlapJack’s, his knife, fifty caps and some miscellaneous ammo for weapons we didn’t have. We also had our traveling food and some water.

Noble gave me a confused look. “What are you doing with Dash?” He said as picked up the pills.

“We found it on some raiders on our way to the city.” I explained. 

“Okay then, Dash isn’t the worst drug out there but it can still be dangerous if you’re not careful.” Noble continued to look over everything we had, trying to decide if anything had any decent value. “Alright, Rivet, that shotgun could be effective but it’s a bit too limited with the range, that nine millimeter won’t do much to those armored suits. We’ll need to find something with a bit more power. Deadbolt, you got anymore grenades?”

The brown stallion shook his head. “I used the last one when we were running from the power armor yesterday.”
Noble sighed. “Add those to the list then.” He picked up Rose’s revolver and gave it a lookover. “Twenty-two caliber revolver, again, not very effective against heavy armor. I’ve got a few caps to throw in as well but we’re not going to have enough get fully equipped. Rivet, you're going to have to deal with just having the shotgun to fight them for now. We’ll get Rose a bigger weapon and some grenades for Deadbolt. What’s the plan after we get some better equipment?” He looked over to me as he said the last sentence.

“We still need to get to the Stable-Tech building. We think we can find out something about the Y34RK on a computer there.”

Noble nodded to himself. “Alright, that sounds like a good place to start.”

We packed back up and started to look around at the various shops that ponies had set up in the lot in front of the clinic. Grenades weren’t hard to find. One stand run by a griffon with a scar that stretched diagonally across his face was showing off various types.

I had never actually seen a griffon before. I knew what a griffon was, but we were never taught much about them back in the stable, most because no one ever thought we would see one ever again.

“You got a problem buddy?” He asked in a gravelly voice.

I didn’t realize that I was staring at him. “No, sorry.” I said sheeply and averted my eyes

He shrugged and looked back to Noble and Deadbolt who were looking at the various grenades. “What are you looking to kill? I got something for everything.”

“We need something that will get through thick armor.” Noble said, clearly avoiding saying anything about power armor specifically.

The griffon cocked an eyebrow at him. “Well, a regular frag has enough explosive force to do some serious damage, but if you're looking for something for robots or electronics I have some EMPs. They’ll stop anything electric dead in its tracks.”

Noble thought it over for a minute. “We’ll take two frags and one of those EMPs. Those could be useful.” 

Even just buying three grenades drained most of our money. The griffon directed us to someone who might have some decent firepower. A pony named Overhaul who had a store set up in one of the other buildings that made up the block. 

“Welcome to Overhaul’s Weapons and Mods.” The gray stallion said as we entered. Racks of weapons and gun parts lined the walls and tables in the room. The store was a single room that looked similar to the rooms that Noble had rented for us last night. 

He showed us a large variety of the weapons he had. All of them would have more power than Rose’s revolver, but they were all in great shape and far out of our price range. “Well I got something that’s a bit less reliable but it would still do a bit more to thick metal than that little pea shooter you got.”

He went behind the counter and pulled out what looked like a toy gun. It was boxy and had some weird electronics covering the casing. “It’s old but I figure a magical energy weapon in any condition would be far more effective than that revolver of yours.” He said looking over the old weapon.

“What’s a magical energy weapon?” Deadbolt asked looking at the strange pistol. 

Overhaul snapped what looked like a battery pack into the bottom of the handle then turned and took a shot at a target he had on the wall. A red laser fired from the strange weapon, leaving a searing hole on the target.  “It’s a weapon that uses magic charges that create a superheated laser instead of firing bullets. Others can can shoot larger blasts or plasma but for what you're asking this is the only thing I got your gonna be able to afford. Tell ya what. Throw in that revolver and I’ll throw in a few charge packs” 

We traded him the last of our caps and the revolver for the pistol and some ammo for it. We also gave him all of our miscellaneous ammo in exchange for some shells for my shotgun and some .308 ammo for Noble’s rifle.

“Pleasure doing business with ya.” Overhaul said as we left.

Leaving Overhaul’s we heard some commotion coming from the bridge side entrance to town. Some ponies were gathered in groups and staring toward the gate entrance. We moved out to the main lot to get a better view. I quickly regretted that we had. 

At the gate stood two suits of power armor. Both had massive dents in their armor. The two suits from yesterday.  Behind them stood two unicorns in leather armor, each had a magical energy weapon strapped to their back, some kind of rifle by the looks of them. In the center of the group stood a suited pegasus. He had a jet black mane and a midnight blue coat. He wore a black suit with white pinstripes. His cutie mark had been burned off, a brand of a cloud with a lightning bolt replaced it on his flank.

One of the ponies in the armor noticed us immediately and the group started toward us. The pegasus raised a hoof and his guards stopped as he continued to approach us.

“Don’t worry, they’re not stupid enough to start a fight here.” Noble whispered as the pegasus approached. I was hoping he was right about that.

The pegasus stopped in front of us to examine the group. He stopped on Noble. “So you're the one they told me about. A cowpony with a large rifle.” The pegasus’ voice was deep and he spoke with an air of superiority. 

Noble gave him a wry smile. “That’s right I am.”

The pegasus just gave him a bored, half-lidded look. “No matter, which one of you is Rivet Turner?” 

“I am.”

He took a quick glance at me. “ My name is Apostace, I am here representing Mr.Avarice.”

“What, was Mr.Evil taken?” Noble said interrupting him.

The pegasus huffed. “Say what you will.” He said to Noble before turning back to me. “You have something that belongs to us. I’m here to make an offer for it.”

“What makes you think he want to hear any offer from you?” Deadbolt asked. I could tell he was fighting the urge to pull his knife.

“Because, I’m here to make an offer for your lives. Give us the chip and we will let you walk away without harm.” He kept his voice calm, almost bored.

“And what if we don’t?” Noble challenged.

The dark pegasus turned to Noble, keeping his bored expression. “Then we will take it from you by force.”

“What does it do?” I asked him. I wasn’t going to give up the chip until I knew what it was for. Even then, I wouldn’t be giving it to The Organization. 

“Nothing that you need to know about. Just, give me the chip.” I could hear that he was starting to get annoyed with us. 

Deadbolt grabbed him by the collar with his magic and pulled him close, nearly knocking him off his hooves. “Nothing we need to know about!?” He shouted in the pegasus’ face. As Deadbolt grabbed him, the guards that he had told to stay back quickly advanced, but again the pegasus waved them to stand still. “You fuckers slaughter hundreds of ponies, ponies that we grew up with and you say we don’t need to know?”

Rose grabbed Deadbolt by the shoulder and pulled him back, making him release his magical grip on the pegasus. “Deadbolt, we really don’t want to start a fight with them right now.” She said as she looked around.

Guard ponies and merchants had been watching the exchange. Once Deadbolt had started to yell, a lot of them had hooves on their weapons, ready in case someone opened fire. Seeing this, Deadbolt took a step back from the pegasus. 

Apostace readjusted his suit. As he did, I could see something in his inner pocket. A small glass orb was just barely sticking out. Once he noticed however, he shoved it back into the pocket and adjusted his suit so we couldn’t see it. “Fucking brute. I had thought that they taught manners in stables. Last chance, surrender the chip.”

“Or what? You’ll gun us down right here?” I asked throwing my hoof around at all the nervous onlookers.

He chuckled. “No, I would prefer to not be killed here. We’ll simply keep hunting you. Think about it. How long do you think you can keep running. You’ve managed to get lucky a few times but everyones luck runs out eventually. It’s only a matter of time until we get that chip from you. Just give it to us now and you’ll walk away with your lives.”

“Fuck you.” Deadbolt said slowly, stepping forward to meet his face.

The pegasus met his gaze. “If that’s the way you want it, fine by me.” He turned and walked back to his bodyguards. 

Noble nudged me. I turned to see him looking around at the ponies that had been watching us. “We should make ourselves scarce.”

“Where do you think we should go?”

“We’ll go back to the hotel. I don’t think leaving while they’re here is a good idea. We’ll wait a few hours for him to leave before heading out.“

I nodded and we quickly made our way back to the hotel and gathered in one of the rooms we had rented. I kept my eye on the pegasus and his guards as we left, they didn’t seem to care to keep eyes on us. The pegasus wasted no time in forgetting about us and started trading with some of the shops.

“Well, what do we do now?” Deadbolt asked looking down at the lot from the large window. 

“I still can’t believe these ponies even let them in town.” Rose said quietly. I’ve heard Rose mad before but this was more than just being angry. She was thinking about the slave camp.

Noble sighed. “Rose, we’ve been over this.”

“I know, it doesn’t make it right though.”

“It’s the way the wasteland works. Somethings you just have to deal with.” He said coldly.

She bit back her response and tried not to think about it anymore.

“We need to think about how we’re going to get to Stable-Tech.” I said, getting us back on track.

Noble laid on one of the beds and took his hat off. “Well if we follow the main road out of town the way you three came in we should find it. But I doubt that getting to it that way will be that easy. I have no doubt that Apostace will have someone watching for us to leave.”

“And the subway is still filled with ghouls.” Rose interjected.

“What are our other options?” I asked. “Noble, you know the area better than any of us.”

He ran a hoof through his mane as he thought and let out a long sigh. “Well the way I see it, we’re gonna need to go around. We could cross the bridge, make our way to one of the others in town and head in from the side, but I would rather stay this side of the river.”

“Why’s that?” Rose asked.

“This side of the city is infested with druggies, raiders and ghouls, This is the nice side of town. North of the river is full of mutants and radiation. It’s not somewhere I would like to go. I also don’t know my way around north of the bridge, that half of the city is a lot older than this half. The roads are harder to navigate, I guess it took ponies a while to figure out how to make nice city blocks.”

If this was the good side of town then I would rather never see the bad side. “Could we not go across the bridge and still go around?”

Noble nodded. “We could, but like I said, Apostace will probably have someone waiting for us to leave that way. The other side of bridge is normally too dangerous to stay in one place too long, be a lot less likely someone would be waiting for us on the other side. What is he doing down there, Deadbolt.”

Deadbolt was still staring out the window. He had been watching Apostace ever since we got back to the room. “A caravan came in a while ago. He’s been talking to the merchants in it. Other than that, not much.”

“What about his guards?” I asked

Deadbolt shrugged. “They’ve barely moved. They’re still standing next to the bridge side exit.”

“That means we can’t leave that way either.” Rose said solemnly.


Noble sat up. “Leaving while they’re here isn’t a good idea. Be too easy for them to follow us.”

I didn’t like the idea of waiting around for them to leave, but it was sounding like we didn’t have much of a choice. It was already taking us too long to get to Stable-Tech and I didn’t want to delay getting there anymore than we had to. “So what? We just hang tight and wait for a chance to slip out unnoticed?” 

*Knock Knock Knock* We all turned our attention to the door.

“Who the hell is that?” Deadbolt asked.

I moved over to the door and opened it slightly, just enough to see who it was.

“Hey Rivet, you mind if I come in?” Hermes asked. 

I opened the door and stepped to the side to let the white unicorn in. “Yeah sure. Come on in.”

“How’s your leg feeling?” The doctor asked as he entered.

“It’s fine now. Thanks again.”

“Hermes, what are you doing here?” Rose asked

I Introduced the him to Deadbolt and Noble. He had met Rose yesterday at the clinic. “Guys, this is Hermes. He’s one of the doctors that works at the clinic. What’s going on?”

The stallion looked nervous. “I saw what happened earlier. What did you do to piss off Apostace?”

“You know who he is?” Deadbolt asked.

“Yeah, everyone in the Junction does. He comes by every couple weeks to trade with the caravans. He also donates to the clinic occasionally.”

The sound of that pony doing anything charitable sounded like bullshit to me. “Why would he donate to the clinic?” I asked the nervous stallion.

He gave a mock laugh. “Probably to help his image around town. Ponies here hate him, he’s fucking slaver scum if you ask me. Only reason he’s ever allowed anywhere near town is because he’s loaded. Ponies hear that he gave something to the clinic and think he’s not all that bad for a while, until they remember that he sells slaves. Besides most of what he gives us is useless. Sometimes we get something we can use, like a couple of potions or a few shots of antibiotics, but mostly is drugs like Dash and Buck.”

“Couldn’t you just not accept his donations?” rose asked.

Hermes sighed. “Trust me, everyone at the clinic would love to tell him to fuck off, but we need anything we can get. The little that he gives us that is useful can help a few ponies, we can’t turn that down.” The stallion shook his head. “I’m getting distracted. Why was he looking for you guys?”

“It’s a long story.” I told him.

“Hermes.” Noble started. “How long does he usually stay when trading with the caravans?” 

Hermes look confused at the question. “I don’t know. A couple of hours I guess, never stays past dark. I know that much. I guess he doesn’t want to get caught north of the bridge at night.”

“I don’t blame him.” Noble muttered to himself. “If he’s going to be here that long we’re going to have to wait until tomorrow to head out.”

“You said you need the medical supplies he gives you?” Rose asked. “Isn’t there any other way to get supplies?”

Hermes thought for a moment. “We don’t really have a ton to trade to get a large supply up here. We occasionally get some shipments from other branches of Remedium, but those are few and far between. There is the Museum of Medical Science though. The place is connected to a hospital. From what I’ve heard, the place is full of medical supplies that haven't been touched. Problem is, its north of the bridge, no one wants to go check without some proof.”

Rose perked up a bit, the way she does before volunteering to help somepony. “Hey, we could go check on our way to Stable-Tech tomorrow.” Rose said enthusiastically to the rest of us.

“Whoa, Rose, we still haven't decided if thats the way we want to go. That way will make the trip a lot longer. Besides we don’t know where the museum even is.” Noble said.

“Actually, that sounds like a good plan to me.” I said after giving it some thought. “If it’s on the way then we should head up through there on our way.  Hermes,do you know where it is?” I wanted to help Hermes and the other doctors out as much as I could. I barely gave anything to pay them back yesterday for treating my leg. If we found that there is actually is a large medical supply there they might be able to cut ties with Apostace.

Hermes looked between Rose and myself. “It’s a few blocks away from the west bridge.” He said confused.

Rose turned back to Noble. “See, it wouldn’t be that far out of the way. We go in, see if there are any supplies and get out.”

Noble bit his lip. He was reluctant to have to make the trip any longer than necessary and I didn’t blame him. “If we’re going that way I would like to move as fast as possible.” He thought aloud. “Fine, we can go and check, but I want to be in and out. We don’t waste any time, we can either come back later or get someone else to collect the supplies, if there is any. The west bridge is pretty far as it is. Taking the long way around, we won’t get back until past midnight, even if we leave first thing in the morning.”

Deadbolt moved away from the window to face us. “You're all forgetting one important fact. They can track us. It won’t matter which way we go, they will know exactly where we are.”

Nobled nodded. “You’re right, they will. But I doubt they’ll be willing to follow us while we’re across the river. When we get back to this side we’ll need to make it hard for them to follow us. As long as we move fast and change up our route, they’ll know where we are but it will be harder for them to figure out where we are going, thats the important part.” 

“So we have a plan?” I asked. “Leave first thing in the morning, head to the museum, cross the bridge and weave our way to Stable Tech.”

“Looks like it.” Noble said with a sigh.

Hermes stepped forward. “If you guys are going to the museum I’m coming with you.”

Noble cocked an eyebrow at the white unicorn. “Are you sure about that? We might run into some trouble.”

“Just because I’m a doctor doesn’t mean I can’t handle myself in a fight.”

“I’m actually more concerned about that.” Noble said pointing to Hermes’ robotic hind leg. “Do you think you can keep up with us?”

“Not a problem. I can move just as fast as anyone else with this thing.” Hermes said confidently “Besides, you’ll need me to check the supplies in the museum. you might not know what to search for. Even if you find something, it may not be good anymore.”

The orange earth pony shrugged. “Okay then. Meet us by the bridge side exit in the morning. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day. Everyone needs to get as much rest as you can, we leave first thing in the morning.” He looked over to Rose and I. “And you two better sleep in beds tonight, I don’t want you complaining that your back hurts because you slept in a chair two nights in row.”

Hermes returned to the clinic to finish out his day. There were still some sick and injured ponies there and he wanted to make sure they would get taken care of without him tomorrow.

Deadbolt continued to watch Apostace until he left later that day. He left with a small cart of supplies that he purchased from the caravan and merchants around the lot. Deadbolt said he mostly saw weapons and ammo in the cart before the pegasus left. 

Hermes had gotten us a map of the city before returning the clinic. Rose, Noble and I spent the rest of the day planning our route. It was an old map, Noble knew some of the roads would be blocked by rubble or had raider nests. We would be taking the bridge out of town to the north and head west once we crossed, the northern part of the cities’ layout wasn’t as easy to navigate as the southern half. We could use our Pip-Bucks to keep us going the right direction. We would hit the Museum of Medical Sciences and check for supplies. After that we get across the west bridge as fast as possible. Then we weave our way through the southern part of the city and head east to Stable Tech.

With our plan set we spent the remainder of the day getting some rest. I didn’t get a lot of sleep the previous night. Thankfully, insomnia took the night off and I managed to get to sleep fairly quick. I guess my brain thought tomorrow was going to be exhausting enough without lack of sleep. Maybe we can finally figure out what the hell this chip is for.

> Chapter 7: The Museum Of Medical Science
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

We woke up at first light. Today was going to be long and we were going to get moving as soon as possible. In any other situation I would have strangled someone for waking me up this early, but I was eager to go. We all put on our armor, or in Noble’s case his coat and left the hotel.

Hermes was waiting for us by the bridge. He was accompanied by a yellow unicorn mare. She was very young and had a hypodermic needle cutie mark. “You guys ready to go?” Hermes asked as we approached.

Noble looked at the mare, then turned back to Hermes. “Who’s this?”

“I’m Cure, I work at the clinic with Hermes.” She said with a polite nod.

“She’s a Remedium trainee.” Hermes corrected. “She’s up here learning how to be a doctor and well on her way I might add.” Cure gave a slight blush to Hermes’ complement.

“Let me rephrase my question. What is she doing here?” Noble gave Hermes an annoyed glare.

“She’s coming with us. We wanna be able to grab as many supplies as we can when we get to the hospital.” Noble went to open his mouth but Hermes cut him off. “I know, we’ll be quick, and don’t worry, she won’t slow us down at all.”

Noble sighed. “Fine, lets get going.”

The bridge was a giant metal structure with a paved road going down the middle. The river it crossed over stretched all the way through the city. From the middle of the bridge you could see all the way down and past the city is both directions. Looking west it wasn’t hard to spot the west bridge. Another massive metal path over the water, it looked small in the distance. We would have to make our way to it.

“So you’re Hermes’ student then?” Rose asked Cure as we started across the bridge.

She gave another nod. “Yeah, I’m in Trottingham to finish up my training. Once I’m done up here I’m heading back to Manehatten to officially join Remedium.” 

“I’m glad to see there are ponies like you two.” Said Rose

“I just want to help whoever I can.”

At the end of the bridge was a large gated wall that spanned the width of the bridge. A couple of guards sat on top looking out onto the northern part of the city. 

“Excuse me!” Noble shouted to them. “We’d like to get through here.”

One of the guards, a unicorn with a shaved mane, cocked an eyebrow. “Are you sure about that?”

Noble gave him a nod and the unicorn shrugged. “Alright then.” His horn lit up and the gate swung open. “Be careful out there.” He called to us as he closed it behind us.

Immediately I could see the difference between the two halves of the city. The buildings here ,while still tall, were much shorter and in much worse condition. Directly in front of the bridge was a completely collapsed building surrounded by two others that looked like the could go at anytime. The roads were so broken up that they were more a series of pot-holes than actual roads. There was more foliage this side of the bridge. The roads were wide and separated by lines of trees, all dead and blackened now, along with some old shrubs. 

Noble made us keep a quick pace. I kept the EFS up to detect anything before we got to it, but Noble kept an eye out as he lead us. Hermes had no trouble keeping pace with the rest of us, his leg gave off a “Tink” with each step. Cure stayed by his side as we made our way to the hospital.

As we moved farther into the city the air started to take on a dark green hue and my Pip-Buck started to click. The area was radioactive, it wasn’t a lot of radiation but it was more than I was comfortable with. “I think we should find another way around. We’re getting more radiation as we go this way.” 

“Rivet, are you seeing that?” Asked Deadbolt. 

I turned my head to where he was facing. Two red lights were moving quickly around us. “Yeah, I do.”

“Noble, we might have trouble over here.” 

Just as Deadbolt said that a horrible blood-curdling scream came from the direction of the lights. Two massive ponies came rushing around the corner. Both of them were hairless and their skin was a sickening yellow that was stretched tight over their massive muscles. One carried a plank of wood with rusty nails sticking out of it, the other one tossed a grenade as they came into view.

“Watch out!” Hermes yelled and we dodge out of the way of the grenade. 

“BOOM!”

Pulling out my pistol, I turned to face the monstrous ponies. They were already on top of us by the time I got to face them. I flew into SATS and fired three shots, nearly point blank , into the first ones head. 

“Bang, Bang, Bang!”

He reeled back in pain, but recovered quickly and turned to give me a powerful kick with his hind legs. The hit knocked the air out of me and I collapsed on the pavement. The massive pony turned and lifted up onto his hind legs to bring his front hooves down on me. Just before he stomped on me Deadbolt leapt over me, tackling him and stabbing into his neck repeatedly with his knife. The yellow monster fell, blood spraying from the holes in its neck. 

“You okay?” Deadbolt asked as he jumped off the corpse.

“I’ll be fine.” I said, standing up and trying to catch my breath.

The one with the nail-board rushed at Hermes and Cure. Hermes pulled out a massive revolver. “Bang!” He shot at the beast’s leg. The bullet tore straight through but it did almost nothing to slow him down.

Rose grabbed her energy pistol and fired. “Kzoo!” A red laser shot out the magical weapon. The yellow monster screamed as the laser left a burning scar on its shoulder. 

Noble unslung his rifle. “Boom!” With expert skill he sent a single shot right into its forehead and out the other side. Blood and brains exploded out the back of its head and left red  splotches on the ground behind it.

“Umm, guys…” Rose started, looking out the way the monstrous ponies had come from. More red lights began to appear on the EFS “We got more coming!”

“What the hell are those things? ”Deadbolt asked as he saw the lights.

“Super Mutants, we need to get out of here!” Hermes shouted.

Noble nodded and threw his rifle onto his back. “I agree, we shouldn’t fight them. We need to go.”

We turned and ran. The mutants weren’t going to let us get away easy. Every time I turned my head back they were a little bit closer. I counted at least five more, one of them wearing makeshift metal armor and held a sledgehammer. 

“Quick, through here.” Noble shouted. There was a hole the side of building, big enough for a regular pony to fit through. The massive Super Mutants would have no chance to fit through. 

Noble turned, pulled out his pistol and began to fire. Hermes was the first through the hole. I stopped to help Noble hold them off. One of the Super Mutants carried a rifle and began to fire. Cure and Deadbolt rushed through the hole in the wall.

Noble and I started to unload our pistols towards the mutant with the rifle. It took both of us putting several shot into him to take him down. Just before Noble’s final shot, the Mutant fired. I could feel the bullet rip into my right shoulder. “Shit! Rivet!” Noble shouted as he saw me fall.

I dropped my pistol and fell onto the ground clutching at the bleeding hole. Rose and Deadbolt grabbed me and pulled me into the building. Noble quickly followed us in. Hermes and Cure had found a book shelf and pushed it over. They used to block off the hole just after Noble entered. 

The mutants shouted and banged on the other side of the case. Deadbolt and Noble turned and braced themselves against it.

Rose swung her saddle-bag off and grabbed a healing potion, but Hermes stopped her before she could put it to my mouth. “It’ll only be a temporary fix if we don’t get the bullet out.” The White unicorn said as he levitated some long tweezers from his bag. “Rivet, hold still, this won’t hurt much.”

He drove the tweezers into the burning wound in my shoulder. “ARG!” 

“I lied.” Pain shot through my entire leg as he finally grabbed onto the bullet. “Okay, one, two, three!” He yanked the bullet out sending another shock of fire into the wound.

Rose handed me the potion and I shakily put to my mouth. As I drank the fire in my foreleg settled and the wound stitched itself back together. I laid panting for a few moments.

The shouting on the other side of the bookcase stopped. “I think they gave up.” Deadbolt said, slowly standing back from the case. 

Noble let himself relax for a moment. “I think you're right.” He said with a relieved sigh. “Rivet, you okay?”

I gave my foreleg an experimental shake. “Yeah, I should be good.” I was still panting and shaking, but the wound was healed.

“This was a stupid idea.” Deadbolt complained. 

Nobled nodded in agreement. “Yeah it was. Little late to stop now.”

“If Rivet’s alright, can we please just get moving.” Hermes said. He had moved over to the door to take a look at the building we found ourselves in. The room we had entered through looked like some kind of office. A desk with a broken terminal was flipped over in the corner and an old bulletin board hung on the wall. It still had a few faded pictures and notes pinned to it. The rest were scattered around the room.

The door lead into a hallway lined with more offices. At the end of the hall was a large reception area. Skeletons of ponies laid near chairs and over the front desk. Where they had been when the mega spells hit.

According to the EFS, the way out through the front was clear. I took one step out before Noble yelled. “Rivet stop!”

I froze and looked at him confused.

“Look down.”

A few feet away in front of the main door was a small disk with a glowing yellow light on top. “Thats a mine, take another step and it’ll activate.” 

I slowly began to back up. “Thanks, how do we get out if the can’t get close to that?”

“Back up and get ready to run.” He said as he produced his pistol. 

“Bang! BOOM!”

The mine exploded leaving a black mark on the pavement and we took off. The Super Mutants couldn’t have gotten far and they probably heard that. We followed the river as much as possible without staying next to it. We made sure we could see it between buildings as we moved. Collapsed buildings and pockets of radiation were making it a lot harder to navigate through the city and slowed us down.

We ran for about an hour before we decided that it would be okay to take a short break. We hadn’t stopped running sense the run in with the mutants and all needed a breather. We found a building that was mostly collapsed, except for a few pillars and parts of the second floor. Noble climbed up to one of the few pieces of the second floor that was left to keep an eye out. Everyone else slumped down in the most comfortable spot they could find. 

“Rivet, how far are we from the bridge?” Noble asked from his perch.

I opened up the map on my Pip-Buck. I wasn’t a great judge of this kind of thing, but I could tell the constant running had sped us up a little. “Still pretty far. Maybe two hours if we keep this pace.”

Deadbolt gave a sigh. “Great…” 

“Any sign of the mutants?” I called to Noble.

He climbed back down and set his rifle to the side as he relaxed. “Nothin’, I think we lost them.”

“Still, we should probably not rest for too long.” Hermes said. “There's probably more around.”

Noble nodded to him, then took a large drink from one of his water bottles. I took a drink from mine and heard the click of the radiation as I drank. That reminded me, we had been running through a radiated area earlier. I open up the medical data section on my Pip-Buck. the radiation meter was dangerously close to the first tick mark.

“Alright, we should get moving.” Noble said reslinging his rifle. we all repacked and started back along the river.  We were now staying alongside the river. The water was a sickly green and probably radioactive. It was about a ten foot drop from the walkway to the water.

I could see the west bridge slowly getting closer. We were about halfway, but we still had another stop. “Hermes, how far are we from the museum?”

He looked around for a minute, getting a bearing on the area. “We shouldn’t be too far. If those old maps are good, I think we should be able to see it here in a few pretty soon.”

He wasn’t wrong. Soon enough The Museum of Medical Sciences came into view. It was a massive building, one of the bigger ones on this side of the river. You could clearly see where the Museum ended and the Hospital began. The museum half was a brown with pillars lining the entrance. A border of white bricks surrounded the outside, doors and windows. The Hospital section was a sterile white. The entrance had a ramp that was covered. The ceiling over the ramp had collapsed, blocking the entrance to the Hospital. We would have to go in through the museum.

The entrance to the museum was a single massive room with a hallway going out from each side. Red velvet separators that would have formed the lines were knocked over and thrown about the room. The front desk seemed untouched, some of the terminals still gave off a soft green glow against the wall behind it.

“This place is huge.” Rose said looking up at the high ceiling, which must have been three stories high. 

“It’s also really creepy, can we please hurry.”  Cure looked nervous about being here.

The hospital was off to the right side of the building. The hall had a sign that said “Today’s Medicine” though it was faded and hard to read. A picture hung on the wall as we entered the hall. It was of a yellow pegasus mare. She had a soft smile and was waving a hoof into the museum welcoming you. “The Ministry of Peace welcomes you.” was written on it. I recognized the mare, she was one of the mares from the picture of Pinkie Pie. She looked older on the poster, slight wrinkles had started to form under her eyes.

“Rivet? You coming or what?” Deadbolt called seeing me stopped at the poster.

“Oh, yeah, sorry!”

The hall opened into another large room. The room was full of glass display cases set in rows. Each had a small plaque describing what was in the case, or in some cases what had been in the case. Most of them were full of small medical tools.

“Some of these things are kinda scary lookin’” Noted Noble. I agreed, many of the tools seemed to be various blades or painful looking clamps. One particular tool that was used to hold rib cages open looked particularly disturbing. I was not a fan of this place already. Hermes and Cure however were stopping and reading most of the plaques with noticeable interest. The disturbing tools combined with the silence of being the only ponies here made it easily the creepiest place the wasteland had showed me.

“Hey Rivet, come look at this.” Rose was standing next to a bookshelf full of various medical books. “Think any of these might come in handy?”

I shrugged, I wasn’t a doctor and probably wouldn’t understand half of the words in those old books. Rose had a crash course from Daisy on wasteland medicine while we were in Marefield but it was far from decent training. “I don’t know, maybe.”

One of the books did catch my eye as something that might be very useful. A book on breaks and fractures and ways to treat them. Rose put it into her pack and we continued through the museum.

The next room was full of medical robots. Personally, I wouldn’t want any of them working on me. “The Auto-Doc” read one of the plaques. It was a terrifying machine. You laid on a steel bed while a machines that consisted of a small screen and keyboard and three mechanical arms, each wielding a different tool, performed various operations on you. Another version was meant for you to be standing and had the machine in the top of a large metal tube that you would stand inside. Probably the worst one looked like a giant floating spider. Each of its “Legs” had a different tool and it came equipped with what looked to be a buzz saw.

“Who would be insane enough to let one of these things operate on them?” Asked Deadbolt as he examined the various machines.

Each room was just a bit worse than the last. The next was dark, the only lights being small ones that illuminated that walkway and yellow spot lights that shined down on various skeletons and what I hoped to Celestia weren’t real ponies that had been stuffed.

“I really don’t like it here.” Rose said, trying to say as far from any of the room’s exhibits as possible.

“I know what you mean.” Nobled answered.

A large sign hung over the exit to the room. “Medicine Of Tomorrow.” It was a single large room, only a few exhibits were on display. A large portion of the room was taken up by a small theater that had been set up. The screen was cracked, but a loop of some old movie was playing. I assumed it explained what some of the machines in the room where meant to do, but the speakers just gave off short, quiet bursts of static.

One of the exhibits was missing. Hermes was standing in front of the empty display area reading the description of what should be there. “A stasis pod.” He said as I approached. 

“I’m sorry?”

“That’s what this was supposed to be. Says here it was meant to pretty much stop the body while surgeons worked. Would have made it a lot easier to perform complicated surgeries if you didn’t have to worry about the patient bleeding out.”

I looked up at the empty space. “Yeah, wonder where it is.”

“Would have been a prototype. Probably never actually arrived.” He said with a sigh. “Come on, we have to be near the entrance to the hospital.”

The actual entrance to the hospital was harder to find than we thought it would be. It wasn’t in plain view, but instead hidden behind on of the larger displays. The transition from museum to hospital was less than seamless. One side of the door was a dull brown with soft lighting and carpet, the hospital was white tile with a green line going down the middle, white walls and flickering overhead lights.

We came out in a long hall lined with rooms. Each had a window to look in at the patient that would be occupying it. Most of them were pitch black or had flickering lights. 

“Okay, where would the supplies be Hermes. This place give me the creeps and I’d like to get out as fast as possible.” Noble said moving a little slower than usual.

“There are a few places I want to check. The ICU, the nurses station and surgery. There should also be a few closets with supplies throughout the place.” 

Deadbolt sighed. “Fantastic, this is gonna take forever.”

We found the nurses station on this floor first. A counter with more terminals in front of a set of filing cabinets and a closet. A skeleton with torn scrubs laid behind the counter. Hermes slowly stepped around it as he moved to the closet. He opened the door and slowly peaked in. Then he let out a sharp gasp that nearly had us all pulling out our weapons. 

“No way!”

“What is it, Hermes?” Cure asked before the rest of us could.

“Come look.” He moved out and we all stepped in to look in. Shelves completely stocked with supplies filled the closet. “If the whole hospital is stocked like this then we’ll have no trouble getting some of the others to help us retrieve it.” Hermes was nearly jumping with excitement. Even this much would be enough to help a lot of ponies.

“Thank Celestia.” Rose let out a sigh of relief. “I was worried we might be coming here for nothing.”

Even Deadbolt had a slight smile. “I guess we’re not wasting our time here then. We still have a lot more to search though.”

Hermes cleared his throat. “Right, right, Cure, grab some supplies and lets keep going.” Hermes and Cure partially filled their saddle-bags and we continued through the hospital. 

We were moving to a more populated section of the hospital. The rooms that had working lights almost all had the skeleton or rotting corpse of a pony in the bed. Most of them were attached to various machines. A single heartbeat monitor was still working and gave off a high pitched whine as it read a flat line. 

*RRAAGGH!* A gargled scream came from one of the rooms and a ghoul slammed into the window and started pounding on it. I reached for my pistol, that’s when I realized I dropped it earlier. “Shit.” The door was closed and I think it lacked the capacity to open it. The scream had us all draw our weapons on it, nearly made my heart rip out of my chest. 

I gave a sigh as I realized it wasn’t getting out of there anytime soon.

“What are we gonna do about it?” Deadbolt asked. “Shooting might attract attention.”

Noble put his pistol up the glass at head level with the ghoul. “If there is anything else in here it probably already knows we’re here. We didn’t exactly stay quiet at the nurses station. Besides are far as ghouls go, I doubt there are too many here.” *Bang!*

“What’s wrong Rivet?” Rose asked seeing looking annoyed. 

“I dropped my pistol back when those mutants shot me.”

“I’m sure we’ll find another one for you. You still got your shotgun. Just gonna have to settle for that for a while.” Noble said

The ICU was just around the corner. It was an open area, sectioned off by curtains. It looked a lot like the Remedium clinic at The Junction. Most of the beds here were filled with bodies and what appeared to be the corpses of doctors littered the room. There were closets on either side of the room. Both of them were full of supplies and tools. The more we searched this place, the more I was happy we came here. 

Hermes turned back to us with a wide grin. “Okay, just one more place to check then we can get out of here.” We all took some of the supplies this time. There was clearly enough to go around here and while we wanted to give as much as we could to Hermes, we were still going to need some. 

We made our way to surgery. The white walls transitioned to a muted green as we entered the wing. There were a lot less rooms on this side of the hospital. Most of them were large rooms with smaller viewing rooms attached. They all had an Auto-Doc attached to the ceiling that hung over a bed in the middle of the room. 

The lights had completely failed as we went further in. We had to navigate by the lights on our Pip-Bucks. “Hermes, do you know where you're going?” I asked.

“Umm, I think so. It’s hard to tell. Maybe we can find a breaker and get these lights back on.”

Moving through the dark surgery wing was nerve wracking but we kept moving farther in. The occasional skeleton came out of the darkness as we progressed. 

*Clang!* We spun around to see Noble holding his hooves up to a cart full of tools, ready to keep it upright if it fell. “Sorry.” We all let out our held breaths and kept walking. 

There was a loud whirring sound and the lights slowly came to life. “What the hell?” Deadbolt said looking up at the now working lights.

“The generators are probably just starting to fail. Hospitals all had their own magical generators just in case the city lost power. The ones powering this wing but be on their last legs.” Hermes explained.

Once the lights had come back it didn’t take us long to find the surgery supply room. It was a much larger room than the previous places we checked and had even more supplies. It even had a more portable Auto-Doc than the ones in all of the surgery rooms had. 

“This is amazing. I can’t believe all this stuff has just been sitting here.” Rose said as she sifted through some of the boxes of supplies. 

“Most of it is still in great condition. This is the biggest medical cache I’ve ever seen.” Hermes said excited.

“Okay, we found that the place has a giant stockpile. I’m happy, really, but can we please leave now.” Noble said.

“What’s wrong Noble? Don’t like hospitals?” Rose teased.

“This is my first time in one. Apparently not.”

Hermes and Cure filled the rest of their packs. “Thanks for bringing us here.” Cure said. “We can help so many ponies with all these supplies.”

Hermes nodded to her. “Okay, let’s get out of here.” The lights turned off almost on queue. 

“Fantastic.” Sighed Deadbolt

Making our way back didn’t take us nearly as long. Even through the darkness we navigated the halls much faster. “I can’t wait to get back to Junction 26. Once the others see this they’ll get a team together in an instant to collect the rest.” Hermes said with a giant grin.

“I’m sure the entire Junction will be grateful to you four for getting us here.” Cure Said to the rest of us.

We almost made it back to the museum when Cure noticed another supply closet that we hadn’t checked. “Hold up, I wanna check this one too.”

She opened the door to a floating spider bot. The single light of its eye looking right at her. “Hold still while the doctor operates.” It said as it raised it’s saw blade. 

Time seemed to slow as it happened. Everyone drew their weapons and took aim.Cure froze as the medical bot swung its arm down at her. We opened fire on the robot, but it was too late. The saw blade slammed into Cure’s head. Pieces of skull and brains flew into the air. Hermes dropped his gun as he saw his student’s head torn apart.

The robot ripped the blade out of the unicorn's skull and tossed her to the side as it came for us. I was one to bring it down. It closed in at me and I sent both barrels of the sawed-off into its eye.

Hermes rushed to yellow unicorn. She laid motionless, her eyes wide. “Please no, no. I...I can fix this. Just hold on.” Tears streamed from Hermes’ eyes has he held her. He swung his pack off and grabbed various tool and some potions.

Rose slowly put a hoof on his shoulder. “Hermes…” 

He was shaking as held the tools and potions. He looked up at Rose, then back to his dead student and slumped down crying. We all stood quietly as he mourned over Cure. Rose wrapped him in a hug and he cried into her shoulder.

“I’m sorry Hermes.” Was all I could think to say.

“It’s not your fault.” He said through his sobs. But it was our fault. If it wasn’t for us she wouldn’t have been here. If it wasn’t for us she would have finished her training and went on to help countless ponies in the wasteland. If it wasn’t for us she wouldn’t have died. Hermes’ crying slowed as he got himself under control. He stood up slowly, shaking. 

“We can go back to Junction 26. You don’t have to keep going.” Noble said. 

Hermes shook his head. “No, no, I’m coming with you. I just need another minute.”

“We can’t bring her with us.”

“I know.”

He finally turned to face us. “When we get back, I’m getting some ponies to come get these supplies. and we’re coming back for her. She shouldn’t stay in this place.”

Hermes let us take her saddle-bag with us. We didn’t want to be disrespectful but anything we could carry back would be immediate help for the rest of Remedium. Deadbolt volunteered to carry it. He was a strong pony, he wouldn’t have much trouble carrying a second bag.

We were quiet making our way back through the museum. No one knew what to say. The trip back through seemed to take even longer than the first.

“We’re going to need to pick up the pace when we get out of here. Do you think you’ll be okay Hermes?” Noble asked as we passed into the entrance hall of the museum. 

He gave a slow nod. “Yeah, I’ll be fine.” His eye were still red and tearing up. 

He was right though, as we left we picked up back to our earlier pace. He didn’t have any trouble keeping up with us, but anyone could see that he  was distracted, not that you could blame him. As we moved we ran into more radiation, my Pip-Buck began to click as we passed through. We tried to move as fast as possible to avoid exposure any longer than necessary.

I was starting to feel a bit nauseous by the time we got out of the area. “Hermes, what are the symptoms of radiation sickness?” I asked out of both concern for myself and to try to give him something to think about. 

“Um… it depends on how bad you have it. What are you feeling?”

“A bit nauseous and getting tired.”

He thought for a moment. “Yeah, that sounds like minor poisoning. We’ll get you some Radaway when we get back to the clinic. You’ll feel sick for a while but as long as you're not vomiting blood, your hair isn’t falling out and your skin isn’t falling off, you’ll be fine.”

Oh great, my skin could fall off and I could go around looking like a ghoul. Assuming I didn’t just die. I could deal with the feeling like I could vomit anytime. I don’t think I could deal with that.

We made good time getting to the west bridge. It was late afternoon by the time we made it to north side of the bridge. This one was clear, no wall, no wagons. It was wide open, I had a terrible feeling about it.

We got about halfway across before that feeling came to fruition. “There they are!” Shouted a voice from behind us.

Four Super Mutants were rushing at us from the end of the bridge. The were lead by the armored one we had seen earlier, still wielding his sledgehammer. The others had various clubs and nail-boards.

Deadbolt pulled out a grenade and tossed it their way, payback for earlier. It flew right into the middle of the group, but one of them was fast. With a quick swing of his club he sent flying away before it exploded. 

Hermes and Noble were quick to draw and start firing. The two dropped one of them before they had a chance to react. One came running at me. Just as he reached me I went into S.A.T.S.. I unloaded two shots from the shotgun into his head. It exploded sending gibbs flying backwards. 

I jumped to the side as the mutant fell toward me. “Rivet look out!” I heard Noble shout. I turned to see the metal clad mutant feet away. I didn’t have time to reload. He swung his hammer and I tried to jump back.  

My head exploded in pain and I fell to the ground clutching my skull. Blood ran down my face as I rolled and screamed. It felt like someone was sticking a power drill into my face. My ears rang and I couldn’t force my eyes to open.

“Rivet!” Rose screamed and started firing on the mutant that hit me

I could barely hear the fight. The pain in my head was the only think in the world then. Everything slowly faded as I blacked out from the pain.

> Stable Tech Tower
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

    I woke up with a throbbing headache, it felt like everytime my heart would beat a small jolt of pain would shoot through my head. I looked around and found I was inside, the others were sitting around a fire they lit in a trash can. My mouth was dry, I found my bags laying a few feet away. As soon as my horn lit up to grab them my headache erupted.

“ARG!” I screamed in pain as I gripped at my head.

The others came running immediately. “Rivet!” Shouted Hermes. “Hold him still.” Deadbolt and Noble held me down while Hermes injected me with some painkillers. They were fast acting and dulled the pain, not completely but enough to focus again. I laid there panting for a few moments before anyone said anything.

“This is going to sound like a dumb question.” Hermes started. “But, how are feeling?”

I slowly sat up, trying to avoid any further head pain. “Well my head hurts…” I didn’t notice at first, but no one other than Hermes was looking me in eye. “What’s wrong?”

Hermes bit his lip. “It’s probably better to show you.” His horn lit up and he pulled a small partially broken mirror from his bag. He angled it so I could see my head.

I wordlessly moved a hoof to my horn. It had been broken off by the sledgehammer I took. The end was sharp and it hurt to touch. 

“Can you use your magic?” Hermes asked

I had tried and it hurt like hell, but that didn’t stop me from trying again. My horn lit up and the pain returned, not as intense this time thanks to the painkillers but enough to make focusing on lifting my bags hard. Though I did manage to lift them this time.

“We should head back to the Junction.” Noble said seeing me barely lift the bags.

“No!” I shouted and sent another jolt through my skull. “No, we’re almost there. We keep going.” Going back now wasn’t an option. Hermes chose to keep going after Cure was killed, I can keep moving after this. I got up slowly, trying to show them that I was good to go.

“Rivet are you sure you're okay to move?” Rose asked seeing me struggle to get onto my hooves. 

“I’m fine.” My eyes clenched shut as I lifted my bags onto my back. “Lets get going.” I walked out of the building they had dragged me into for shelter. The others looked between themselves then started to follow wearily. 

Deadbolt quickly jogged up next to me. “Rivet, we should go back and let you rest. We can make another run for Stable-Tech later.” 

I sighed. Deadbolt, “I’ll be fine.”

He held out a hoof and stopped me. “No, you won’t be ‘fine’ Rivet.” He looked me dead in the eye and he actually looked concerned. “You can barely use your magic. What happens if we run into raiders, or worse, The Organisation?”

“I’ve got a mouth. I can still hold a gun.” I said as I started to walk around him.

Deadbolt stopped objecting, instead he insisted on taking the lead. It was already dark by the time I woke up. The streets of Nottingham's southern half looked more inviting during the day but at night it was nothing but tall dark towers surround us. As much as I wanted to pick up the pace, both Hermes and Rose wanted me to take it slow. They didn’t try to stop me like Deadbolt had but they didn’t want me to push myself. Noble decided to go off and scout around to keep us out of trouble. We moved slow enough for him to go out and be able to find us easily when he wanted to come back to us. 

Occasionally as we walked I would try and lift something out of my bag with my magic. Every Time it hurt, but after a while I either was starting to get used to it or maybe it was starting to heal. It also could have been the Med-X Hermes injected me with. 

Noble had been gone about an hour before we saw his tell-tale coat and hat moving down a street toward us. “Find anything?” Rose asked as he rejoined us. 

He shook his head. “Not much, I did find a raider nest but its pretty far out of the way. Still, best to keep an eye out. Other than that looks like a clear run for a while.”

We kept changing our direction and weaving through the streets like we had planned. We didn’t know how well The Organization could track us, but the important part was making it hard for them to guess our path.

“Rivet, how you holding up?” Hermes asked as he scanned around the barren streets. 

“My head hurts and I’m tired. Other than that I’m good. The sooner we get to Stable-Tech the better.” 

He looked a bit concerned. “I want to take a look at you as soon as possible. If you start getting too tired it might mean you have a concussion, which I really wouldn’t doubt if you did have one. If it starts getting hard to focus or you start getting sleepy tell me immediately.” 

I admired Hermes. He had lost someone not even twelve hours ago and was able to keep himself together enough to still act like a doctor. “What about you? How are you feeling?” 
He let out a long sigh. “I’ll manage.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

The white unicorn shoot his head lightly. “No, thanks though. I told you guys I’d help you get what you're after. There will be plenty of time to mourn later.” I could see his eyes tear up slightly as he thought about Cure, but he managed to keep himself together. I wouldn’t have blamed him if he had let the tears come.

It was late when we finally reached the outside of the Stable-Tech building. It barely looked any different than the others around it. Just another concrete monolith. The only discernible feature was the large gear symbol hanging over the doors. We were finally here, finally time to get some answers.

“So what’s the plan here?” Deadbolt asked as we looked up at the massive tower.

I actually had no idea how we were going to find any information on Y34RK. “I guess we go in and start checking computers.” 

He let out a sigh. “Fantastic…”

“I guess we should get started then.” Rose said as she opened the doors.

The lobby of Stable Tech was massive. A large gear made of grey tiles covered most of the floor. The room was in surprisingly good condition. Some of the lights and ceiling tiles hung as if they could fall at anytime but for the most part it looked untouched. 

Rose walked behind the curved reception desk and started looking through papers. “Maybe we can get an idea of where to look in something around here.”

I nodded and took a seat at one of the terminals. It was locked so I went to work unlocking it. Hermes helped Rose look through the stacks of papers. Deadbolt and Noble decided to take a look around the first floor for anything useful.

The painkillers had worn off and my head revolted when I tried to use my magic on the keyboard so instead I had to type with my hooves. I’ll never understand how earth ponies can get used to using their hooves on such small buttons. Needless to say, it took a lot longer than I thought it would and I kept hitting the wrong keys so I nearly locked it out a few times. 

Once I finally broke files flooded the screen files flooded the screen. “This is going to take forever…” Rose and Hermes just gave me a couple of grunts of acknowledgement then I went back to the computer. Most of what was on the computer was messages and spreadsheets. Eventually I found a file that caught my eye.
To: Ink Pen

From: Mogul

Subject: Stable Progress Report 1-25

Miss Applebloom said that she would be stopping in later today. She wants the latest completion reports for Stables 1 through 25. Make sure they’ve been logged and sent to her terminal before lunch.

“Hey guys, I think I found where to look.” I waved them over and they read the message.

Rose rubbed her chin for a second. “I think I saw something about an ‘Applebloom,’ hold on a sec.” She quickly rifled through a few papers. “Yeah here it was. Addressed to Applebloom, says her office is on…, oh great, the fiftieth floor.” 

My head drooped to the ground. “Ugh, well I guess we should get climbing. Lets go find Deadbolt and Noble.” 

Turns out for how long they had been searching, they hadn’t made it very far. We found them in a bathroom staring at something in a stall. “Y’all might wanna take a look at this.” Noble said he noticed us enter.

“Sweet Celestia…” 

In the stall was a pony, or what was left of one. He had been split vertically down the center of his chest. His guts were stuck to the stall around him and his head was missing. He had clearly been here a while. The body stunk and was starting to decompose.

“What could done that to him?” Rose asked, still staring at the corpse.

Noble sighed. “Looks like the work of raiders to me. If it is raiders though, where are the rest of the decorations?”

Deadbolt cocked an eye at him “Decorations?”

“Usually raiders mark their territory with bodies that have been mutilated and hung around. Usually keeps ponies away. But that lobby and outside was spotless.” Noble bit his lip. “I don’t like this, be ready for anything. You guys find anything?”

“Yeah…” Hermes started. “On the fiftieth floor.”

“Fantastic…” Groaned Deadbolt.
We put the mangled corpse out of our minds and started up the stairs. We tried the elevators, they didn’t work. We forced the doors open but the elevator wasn’t on the first floor. From here it didn’t look like anything was wrong. Figuring out what was wrong could take all day. Instead we decided it would be faster to just take the stairs. 

The stairwell was at least a nice one. On one side was glass that gave a good view of the city, the other sides were concrete walls and doors on every floor. I didn’t think I was the most fit pony ever but climbing stairs made it very apparent that I could use some more exercise. Each floor had a sign marking it, which just made it seem like it was taking even longer.

“Rivet.”

“Yeah Deadbolt?”

“Have I told you how much I hate you recently?”

“No, but I’m starting to see things your way.”

Rose half turned her head back to us. “Would you two be quiet?”

Noble and Hermes laughed to each other. “These Stable ponies really like to complain don’t they?” Noble said as he nudged Hermes.

“Yeah, it’s like they’ve never climbed a few stairs.”

The glare I gave them was only rivaled by the one Deadbolt was giving them. And his was only rivalled by Rose’s.

We made it about twenty floors before we decided we needed to sit for a few minutes. Hermes took a seat next to me. 

“How you feeling?” He asked and gestured to my shattered horn.

I wasn’t feeling amazing. The low throbbing of my head started to come back after the first bit of painkillers had worn off. It escalated a bit when I tried to use my magic on the terminal and was now a consistent stabbing. “I’ve been better. But I’ll be fine.” 

The doctor in Hermes didn’t let that pass without further questioning. “While we’re sitting here you mind if I go ahead and take a look as you?” 

I shrugged. “I guess.”

“Good.” He pulled out a small light and pointed it into my eyes. “Your headache getting worse?” 

“It’s better than when I woke up.”

He nodded to himself. “You still feeling nauseous? 

We passed though a decent amount of radiation on our way through the north side. “A little. Can’t say it’s gotten worse.”

He nodded again. “Thats good. Well your pupils look they’re responding correctly.” He said as he pulled the light away and I blinked madly trying to get my vision back to normal.

“You two about ready?” Noble said gathering his pack. “We still got a long way to go.”

I tried to use my magic to get my bags back on but the weight was a little too much. Deadbolt helped me out and we started back up the stairs.

We made it another ten floors before heard something that stopped us. *Bang!*

Rose stopped and looked around at us. “That sounded like a gunshot.”

“Shit, someone else is in here.” Noble said before pulling out his pistol. “I’ll take a look around.”

I pulled out my shotgun and held it in my mouth. It was a weird feeling and I couldn’t quite tell how I was supposed to aim it. “I comin wiff you.”

His eye cocked at me. “What?”

I spit out the shotgun. “I’m coming with you.” 

“No you’re not, Rivet.” He said and gave me a look that didn’t leave room for arguing. “Five minutes. If I’m not back, leave.” He said as he slipped up the stairs almost silently. 

We waited, weapons at the ready for Noble to come back, or to hear something, or for something to just happen at all. Everyone was silent and looking up the stairwell. 

“It’s almost been five minutes.” Deadbolt said looking at his Pip-Buck. “I’m done waiting, I’m going up there.”

Rose stopped him. “Wait, we could give Noble away if we go up there making a bunch of noise. 
Deadbolt gave her a slight push to get her out of his way. “Yeah, and he could be laying up there dead for all we know. I’m going up there.”

I gave Rose an apologetic look. “Deadbolt’s right, he might be in trouble up there.”

*Bang Bang Bang!*

“Scratch that, he’s definitely in trouble.” Hermes said before we all bolted up the stairs.

Red lights started to appear as we ran up the next few flights. Thankfully Noble’s white bar was still showing up. We got to the floor the gunshots were coming from and I braced against the wall next to the door. The stairwell had been blocked off by a few desks.

I peered in. There hadn’t been anymore gunshots maybe we could still go unnoticed. I could see Noble. He was leaning up against an overturned desk and looking at a few ponies sitting in the middle of the room chatting. He glanced over and saw me at the door and quickly motioned for me to get low and stay quiet.

I told the others to stay put and I moved into the room towards Noble. He glanced between me and the ponies who were talking, making sure I wasn’t going to be seen as I crawled across the room. When I got to him he mouthed the word “four.” 

I could hear what the ponies were talking about from here.

“Why the fuck are we doing this again?” One of them asked. 

“Because we’re getting paid dipshit.” Another answered.

“Yeah but we’ve already been paid. Why the fuck don’t we ditch out? What’ll they do? Hire us to kill us?” The first one said again. 

“Will you two shut the fuck up? They’ve gotta come through here. Whats the problem?” A new voice shouted from across the room.

“The problem is I was told I’d be killing some dumbass stable-ponies today and no ones showed up for me to kill yet.” 

“You just killed some of our payment. Have fun with her while we wait.”

I couldn’t help but try to get a peek at them. Sure enough, a white earth pony mare laid in the middle of the ponies. One hole in her head, three more in her chest. She had a strange collar around her neck. The pony that I assumed was the one complaining was flipping her over.

I dropped back down and looked over to Noble. He gave me a nod. We both popped up from behind our cover and fired. 

Nobled dropped one of the two in the middle of the room. My shotgun wasn’t amazing at range and the room was large. I hit the one who was mid-way through raping the corpse of the dead mare. He fell to the side and in panicked surprise he quickly found a desk to take cover behind. The other two in the room quickly found pillars to hide behind. 

The others rushed in after our surprise attack and found cover. *Bang!* A bullet shot through the desk we were hiding behind and just barely missed us. Rose was the first of us to return fire. *Kzoo!* her energy pistol hit home as one of the ponies popped out to fire. He started to glow and exploded into a pile of ash. 

I could see disbelief on Rose’s face as she watched her laser disintegrate a pony. Deadbolt tackled her to the ground just as a bullet passed over her head. 

Hermes swung out from around a pillar and fired his massive revolver. *Bang! Bang!* he sent two shots into the pony in the center of the room. Noble was gone before I noticed him even move. He moved out and flanked behind the last pony who was hiding behind a pillar. I could see a panicked wave of a gun from the pony before *Bang*, Noble shot him in head.

We regrouped by the ponies in the center of the room. “Looks like I was right, raiders” Noble said as he looked at the blood soaked ponies on the ground. 

“Why were they here?” Rose asked.

“They knew we were coming.” I explained. “I overheard them. Hired to kill us.”

“What about her?” She asked gesturing to the corpse of the mare. 

Noble sighed. “Slave, judging by what I heard. They killed her out of boredom.” He started toward the stairwell. “We should keep moving. If there are any more, they know we’re here.” 

We made our way back to the stairs. Deadbolt and Hermes cleared the desks that were blocking it and we started up the stairs again. It didn’t take long for more lights to start showing up. A few floors up I could see at least three more raiders.

They were waiting for us when we reached the thirty-fifth floor. Again they had set up a small blockade of desks and chairs. Noble was checking every door before we passed it. This time when he peeked out a bullet whizzed just past his head. 

“Three, all gathered up in the middle.” He looked over to Deadbolt. “You still got a frag right?”
Deadbolt nodded and pulled it out. “Yep, stand back.” He took a quick look, just long enough to see where the three were standing. Again one tried to shoot but he peeked lower than Noble and their aim was off. 

Noble tapped him on the shoulder. “When you throw it, dive into the room. It will be faster for you to keep moving than to throw and move  back. Find cover as quick as possible.”

Deadbolt and another nod and turned back to the door. He took a deep breath before spinning around the corner and flung the grenade. He lept out of the and bullet grazed his leg. He hit the ground and rolled behind a desk.

“Fuck!” was the only word any of the raiders got out before the grenade exploded. Deadbolt hit the mark perfectly and landed it at the feet of the raider in the center. There wasn’t a whole raider left and bits of the three covered the room.

“You okay?” I asked him as he rejoined us. 

“Yeah, one of the fuckers clipped me.”

Hermes didn’t wait for him to ask and pulled out some bandages. “It doesn’t look deep, these should work fine.”

“It may not be deep but it still burns like hell. How many more do you think?”

Noble thought for a minute. “I don’t know. Usually don’t see large bands of raider around here. Doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Could be thats all of them, could be twenty more. We’re just gonna have to play it by ear.”

Deadbolt sighed. “I figured as much.”

The next few floors were clear. we managed to make it the forty-second floor before anymore lights showed up. But this time there wasn’t just raiders. Two white lights mixed in with the red. We could hear crying and screaming coming from the room. Noble peeked in and saw that none of them were watching toward the door. They all had their attention on the two slaves that were being raped on the other side of the room.

“Fuck… we got two slaves in there.”

I could practically feel Rose’s anger boiling over. “Well lets get them out of there.”

Noble sighed. “Not that simple. We go in guns blazing and they’re gonna use those slaves as shields. We gotta be quiet.” He slipped in the door and unslung his rifle. Rose was right behind him, followed by Hermes, Deadbolt then myself. 

The raiders were shouting and cheering. Between them and the crying mare’s it wasn’t hard for us get into positions all around the room. There were five raiders total, two rapists and three onlookers. I looked over at Noble, he had his rifle set and ready. Deadbolt was the closest and ready to jump out and stab the nearest raider. Rose and Hermes took cover together near a pillar. I was up close ready with the shotgun. Noble gave me a nod.

Noble fired first and blasted the brains out of the one of the ponies in the middle of the group. Rose followed up and fired as fast as she could at the other. *Kzoo Kzoo Kzoo!* The first shot missed, the other two hit him in the chest and he toppled over in pain. Deadbolt lept out and sunk his knife into one that was leaning against a pillar watching the show. Hermes made the mistake of aiming at the same target as Rose and missed.

One of the raiders ran toward the spot I was waiting in. By the time I popped out of cover he was almost on top of me, I noticed him before he noticed me. *Bang!* A single shell took a large chunk out of his arm and he crashed the ground. I hesitated before sending a second shell into his head. He may have been a raider but it still felt wrong shooting someone who was probably harmless. Probably harmless wasn’t good enough though, I had to make sure.

The last raider raider dived for cover and fired blindly. *Bang Bang Bang Bang!* Most of his shots hissed harmlessly through the air, most. He got lucky and Hermes took a pistol shot to the chest. Noble turned and fired sending a shot into the raiders head.

“Hermes!” Rose screamed as he fell. 

We all rushed over to the bleeding doctor. He wasn’t dead, at least yet. He clutched a hole in his chest and yelling in pain. Deadbolt, Noble and I were lost. None of us had any idea if we could even help him. Rose acted fast and pulled out a potion and some tweezers. “Hold his legs!” she shouted and me and Noble grabbed onto him. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then shoved the tweezers into his chest. 

Blood was rushing out of the hole as Rose dug for the bullet. Finally with another scream from Hermes, Rose pulled out the bullet and quickly held the potion to his mouth. He choked as he drank down as much as he could. The wound sewed itself together and left and left a shaking, panting, blood soaked Hermes. He rolled onto his side trying to catch his breath. He had lost a lot of blood, but not enough to kill him.

“G-good work R-Rose.” Said the shaking unicorn. We all let out our collective breaths.

Rose was shaking just about as bad as Hermes was. The first time having to really perform wasteland medicine, and she passed with flying colors. 

Noble was the one who brought up the bad news. “He’s not going to be able to move like this.” 
“Shit…” I said as I looked around the room and saw the two slave mares cowering as far as the chains they were in would let them. I had forgotten about them when I saw Hermes had been shot. I couldn’t help but feel terrible about it and walked slowly over to them.

They were chained to a desk and tried to crawl away as I approached. “It’s okay, It’s okay. I’m not here to hurt you.” I said and stopped to wait for them to calm down. The two were shaking and staring at me like prey at a predator. I looked around at the raiders. “Which one had the keys?” One of them lifted a shaky hoof and pointed to the one Deadbolt had stabbed. 

I picked the keys off his body with my magic. My head got a stabbing pain as I did, but I figured they would feel better if I didn’t get any closer. I unlocked each of them and they slowly stood up. they were also wearing the same collars as the other slave downstairs was. 

“T-thank you.” One of the mares said before they both ran for the exit. Just as they reached the door there was a high pitch beep and I saw a light flash on their collars. *Boom Boom!* Both mares head’s exploded and the bodies dropped to the ground seizing. I starred in disbelief at the two corpses, my brain trying to catch up with what just happened.

There was a laugh. A maniacal, insane laugh. “HeHeHaHaHaHeHe.” I looked over to see a raider clutching his burned chest in with one hoof and holding a small remote with the other. 

Something snapped. I rushed over to him and threw his body against a wall with my magic. I ignored the pain as I started beating him. Blow after blow to the head. He just kept laughing. His remaining teeth broke off as I smashed his jaw. Still he managed to laugh. I swung my shotgun out and stuck into his mouth and the laughing stopped, *Bang!* and was replaced by a bloody gurgling.

I stood over the dead raider, panting. *Bang!* I shot again. I reloaded and aimed down at him again when a hood landed on my shoulder. “Rivet…”

I turned to see Rose and Deadbolt staring at me with concerned looks. “He’s dead Rivet…” I tried to take deep breaths and calm down, but I was still furious. I walked away without saying anything. I knew if I talked I would say something I might regret. I returned to where Noble and Hermes were sitting. 

“You okay?” Hermes asked.

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” I imagine he might have chuckled at that if he had not just been shot and saw two mare’s heads explode. “Do you think you can walk?”

He stood up slowly and Noble and I helped him onto his hooves. “Yeah, I think I can walk. Not very fast though.”

I nodded. “Okay, I’m gonna go ahead and see if there are anymore.” Noble was about to object but I interrupted him “No arguing, you help him up the stairs.” Noble could see my anger and decided to drop it. 

I continued up the stairs ahead of the group. Everyone else stayed with Hermes as he slowly made his way up. I was actually hoping to find raiders. I had never wanted to get in a fight before. I wasn’t sure if I liked the feeling or not. I was out of luck. Those were the last of the raiders. No more lights showed up as I reached the top floor. 

I looked back at the stairwell. Not seeing the others yet, I decided to go ahead and look for Applebloom’s office. It didn’t take long to find, it had two large doors that had gears carved into them and had a golden name plate that read “Applebloom.”

Her office was large. The back wall was just a single large window. The floor was covered in soft green carpet and a large wooden desk laid in the middle of the room along with two extra comfortable looking chairs. A painting had fell off of the wall revealing a safe, the painting was of an apple farm, rows of apple trees and a large barn and silo. On the desk was a terminal.

I sat at the chair behind the desk and took some deep breaths. I didn’t turn on the terminal right away. I decided to look through the drawers first. Most of them were full of papers and folders. There was a larger drawer on the bottom. I pulled it open and an orb rolled to the front. It looked like the same one Apostace was carrying with him. By habit, I went to grab it with magic.

The world tore away around me, then came rushing back. My heart raced with fear as everything shot away, but was replaced with a nervous anxiety as it came back. I felt lighter and my view was a few inches lower. I tried to look around but couldn’t, instead I was looking at the terminal on the desk typing something. 

I was in the same office, except it was clean. The sun shined in from outside. The picture was back on the wall, covering the safe. Thats when I realized I was watching something, I Just along for the ride. But it felt like something was missing. Oh… yep… I was in a mare’s body. On the monitor I could see the file that I was looking for. Completion reports for various stables, including twelve.

A burst of static make me, er… my host jump. “Miss Applebloom, your sister is here to see you.”

“My sister? Um, send her up.” Applebloom shut her computer down and and made sure her desk was in order and waited for her guest. 

A minute later an orange mare wearing a stetson and sporting a cutie mark of three apples walked in. Another one of the mares from the picture. “Hey AppleJack, what are you doing in Trottingham?”

The orange mare approached the desk. “The ministry has me runnin’ all over Equestria these days. I heard you were in town to so I thought I’d drop by. You mind if I take a seat?” The mares shared similar southern accents.

“Of course!” I could feel Applebloom was a bit nervous from her sister’s unexpected visit. “How’ve you been sis?”

Applejack sighed. “I wish I could say I was good. Running the ministry is stressful.” Applejack shook her head. “Sorry, how’s the Stable project going?”

Applebloom was suddenly lit up. “It’s going great. I can’t really talk about specifics but we’ve got the first twenty or so completed.” My host stopped as she noticed Applejack’s down expression. “What’s wrong sis?”

“Applebloom, I didn’t just come to talk. I need your help with something.”

I was brought out of the memory with a flash of light. The air escaped my lungs as the nice, clean office was replaced with the wrecked and dirty one. I gasped for air as I realized what pulled me out.

Rose was holding my head up and slapping me, trying to wake me up. “Rivet? Rivet? Are you okay?”

I blinked and tried to get my bearings again. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.”

“What the hell happened?” Deadbolt asked. I hadn’t even noticed that Noble , Hermes and him were in the room.

I looked down at the orb in the drawer. I nearly tried to grab it with magic again but I stopped myself. Instead I picked it up with my hoofs and placed it on the desk. “I found this.” 

Hermes looked at it for a second. “Oh, thank goodness thats all it was.” He said with a light chuckle.

Noble picked up the orb. “Been a while since I’ve seen a memory orb. What did you see?”

Rose just shook her head, confused. “What is a memory orb?” 

Noble looked over at Hermes. He gave Hermes a look that said “You want to take this one?” Hermes gave him a nod. “They’re recordings. Someone recorded their memory into that orb. You send a bit of magic through it and you can watch it, but i’m guessing you already figured that out.”

I rubbed my head. My headache had came back full force. “Yeah…” Then I remembered. This computer had the file’s on stable twelve. “I think we may have found what we’re looking for though.” I booted up the computer to a login screen. “It can’t ever be easy can it?” 

Deadbolt looked at the locked screen. “You think you can get in?”

“Maybe, in the meantime, see if you can get that safe open.” 

Deadbolt nodded and pulled out his bobby pins and screwdriver.

Noble took a step out. “The rest of us should take a look in the other offices. There might be something valuable.” He smirked and walked out. Rose and Hermes followed him out and the three went to search around.

Neither Deadbolt or I were having much luck getting our respective jobs done. Every now and then I heard a small *tink* swiftly followed by Deadbolt shouting “Fuck.” I was on the verge of locking out the damn terminal more times the I could count. My head was pounding and I couldn’t type with magic. Needless to say, I was quickly getting frustrated.

I powered down the machine for possibly the thirtieth time and leaned back in the chair. I wasn’t going to quit, but letting myself cool off a bit would help me focus better. Deadbolt threw his screwdriver across the room shouting as he did. “Fuck!” He took a few deep breaths then walked away. “Well that was the last of the bobby pins. We’re not getting in that one. How are you doing?”

I sighed and leaned back up to get back to work. “Not great.” 

He watched as I fucked up again and rebooted the computer. “You think you can get it?”

“I don’t know, but I’m gonna keep trying.”

He nodded and walked to the door. “I’ll let you work in peace. I’m gonna go see what the others are doing.”

I kept working at it, rebooting every couple attempts. My headache was making it harder and harder to concentrate. I was about to take another break when I noticed something. A red light on the EFS. I jerked up. how long had that been there?

Deadbolt came running back in followed by Rose and Hermes. “Do you see it?”

“Yeah, where’s Noble?”

Hermes jerked his head toward the door. “He went to check out what it is. He said to wait here for him.”

We all produced our weapons and waited for Noble to come back. After a minute of waiting, his white line dashed across my vision and he re-entered the office. “We got trouble. Two suits coming up, they’ll be here any minute.” 

My horn lit up and I started typing again. My head was splitting as I did.

Everyone else moved to cover and waited for the power armor. “Rivet, what are you doing?” Rose asked, seeing me still at the computer.

“I’m getting this open before they get here.”

Noble slammed a new magazine into his rifle. “You better do it quick.”

The red lights moved across the EFS. At most they were one floor down. “Rivet, we’re gonna need you over here.” Deadbolt said as he watched down the hall for the suits.

Reboot. “I just need another minute.”

“We don’t have a minute.” He snapped.

*Bing* The screen broke away. I finally got it. I let my keyboard go and sighed in relief as my headache settled down to a horrible stabbing. But nothing came onto the screen. After the login broke away it stayed blank. I rebooted and typed the password again. Again nothing came up. 

“No, no no no. Come on.”

Rose looked back and say me pounding on the side of the computer. “What going on?”

“theres nothing here. The terminal’s been wiped.”

Deadbolt nearly dropped the grenade he had ready. “What?”

“Dammit!” I shouted and threw the terminal of the desk. It slammed onto the ground, but the sturdy case didn’t give me the satisfaction of breaking. This was the only lead we had. We had come to Trottingham for this and someone had cleared any hope of getting any files from it.

“Rivet?” Rose started. “You okay?”

The clanging of metal hooves on the concrete stairs snapped our attention back to the armored troops about to come in after us. “It’s not gonna matter in a minute.” Noble snapped. 

I was mad. I was tired. My head hurt and I was nauseous from radiation poisoning. Now the only idea I had turned out to be a bust. I grabbed my shotgun. I was going to give those power armor-clad goons hell. 

The stomping of the heavy armor was getting louder. I pushed the chair away and slid down to wait for them to enter. With the doors closed  and the heavy stomping I couldn’t help but think back to the stable. This time was going to be different. This time, none of us are going to die.

Hermes and Rose shared the desk with me as cover. Deadbolt and Noble stood behind the two large chairs.

The stomping stopped outside the doors. There was a long pause. *BOOM!* The doors exploded off the hinges. One flew over us and out the window. The glass shattered and send large gusts of wind through the office. 

The suits of armor rushed into the room. I was the first to fire. *Bang Bang!* Both shots sprayed against the first suit and the pony lurched back at the force but looked unharmed. I could hear the whirring of his machine guns. Noble shot *Bang!*. The pony reeled back and fired sending sprays of bullets into the wall and ceiling.

The other Suit was equipped with a strange array of barrels that suck out of two large boxes strapped to his sides. *Bang Bang Bang Bang* Each barrel fired one after another sending sprays of shotgun pellets at us. The desk was torn apart by the spray. Bits of wooden shrapnel flew out at us. I took a large piece to the cheek. I took a few pellets into my chest and leg. 

I hit the ground and clutched at the burning holes. Deadbolt threw the EMP. The machine gun equipped suit was engulfed in a cloud of electricity. He seized around before crumpling to the ground.

The shotgun suit turned on Deadbolt and fired. *Bang Bang Bang Bang!* I stood up and time slowed as I watched my brother’s leg tear away from his body. Deadbolt fell to the ground screaming in pain and grabbed at the bleeding wound.

“No!” My vision went red as Deadbolt fell. I slammed two more shot into the shotgun. I wasn’t thinking and tackled the suit. I held the shotgun with my magic. I didn’t feel the headache as I pressed it against his neck and fired. *Bang Bang*. The shots barely made it through the armor, but it was enough. Blood seeped through the holes and cracks in the armor and the pony inside made a bloody gurgle as he died. 

“Deadbolt!” I shouted and dropped the gun. 

Hermes was already on him. “Hold him down!” Noble and Rose grabbed him and held him. I couldn’t get myself to move. I was watching my brother die and could do anything. Hermes Wrapped his leg with healing bandages, they were soaked red faster than he could add new ones. He tossed the bandages aside and pulled out a syringe and stabbed him in in the base of where his leg used to be. I just stared, terrified at losing my brother. Hermes grabbed a potion out of his bag and forced it into Deadbolt mouth. 

“Hes lost a lot of blood. Hes going to need a transfusion.” Hermes said and looked up to me. “Rivet, we’re going to need some of your blood.”

“W-what?”

“You're his brother. You're the only one who might have the same blood type has him.” He reached into his bag and pulled out the largest needle that I’ve ever seen. “This is going to have to be quick and dirty. Sorry Rivet, this is gonna hurt but it’s his only chance.” 

I was still in shock and barely understood what he was saying. “Y-yeah, do it.” I said and held out my leg. I turned away. 

“Rose, can you get an empty blood bag and put an IV in Deadbolt.”

She wordlessly nodded and went to work. Then I felt the needle stab into my arm. I turned and saw the needle fill with my blood. Then I passed out.

I had a dream about the Stable. Waking up, getting a message from Deadbolt and going to work. I would fix whatever needed fixing. I would get in an argument with Deadbolt every time we crossed paths. I would meet with Rose whenever I had a break and we would relax and talk. The Overmare would call someone from maintenance to come “fix” her computer which would have nothing actually wrong with it. Everyday I dealt with ponies who didn’t know how to do their jobs and listened to the same bad music over the radio. I missed it. I wished I could go back to it. Get out of this wasteland. To go back when we were just living, not being hunted down, shot at , poisoned or lost. You never know how well you have it until something takes it away.

When I woke up I was lightheaded. I jolted up but Rose held me down. “Whoa, easy Rivet.”

“Ho-How’s Deadbolt?” 

She glanced around her back. “He’s not dead, but he hasn’t woken up yet.” 

Hermes saw that I was awake and called to Rose. “Rose you can take that IV out now. We should have enough blood.” 

“Okay.” She said before turning back to me. “Hold still.” She undid the tape holding the IV in place and slowly slid the needle out, then closed the end of the blood bag. “There you can sit up now. Be careful though, you might be a little weak.”

She helped me sit up. Deadbolt was laying behind her. His chest was rising and falling in shallow breaths. “How is he?”

Hermes sighed and my heart sank. “Well he didn’t have a bad reaction to the transfusion. So that’s good. But we’ve done all we can here. We just have to wait and see. He’s looking good but I really don’t know.”

My head sank and I looked down. Thats when I noticed I had been stripped out of my armor. Bandages were wrapped around my chest. I had forgotten that I had been shot. “I think I got all of the pellets out.” Rose said when we saw me staring at the wrappings.

“Th-thanks.”

“Rivet.” Noble caught my attention. “We’ve got another problem.” He said and pointed over to an orange stallion with a blonde mane. He was wearing power armor. He was the one that Deadbolt hit with the EMP. His armor wasn’t responding and he couldn’t move. Noble had been nice enough to sit him up and take off his helmet.

I slowly stood up. I was wobbly and light headed. My headache was mostly gone. I assumed I was under some kind of painkiller. “What do we do with him?”

Noble shrugged. “I don’t know. I say kill him, but I figured you would want a say before we made a decision.”

I shook my head and nearly lost balance. “No, at least not yet. I want to talk to him.”

Noble stepped to the side and followed me across the office to the orange stallion. He couldn’t do anything to us now. I didn’t want to kill him if I didn’t have to. But given the circumstances, I thought about shooting him for Deadbolt’s sake. He stared into my eyes as we approached.

“You have a name?”

He just kept giving me an angry stare and kept quiet. Noble sighed. “This guys had a pretty bad day. I would suggest answering him before he does something that you would regret.”

His gaze shifted between the two of us. then he let out a sigh of his own. “Bronze.”

I nodded. “Good start. I’m Rivet Turner, but I guess you already knew that.” I had a lot of questions for him and we weren’t going anywhere anytime soon. “I’m going to be completely frank with you Bronze. I’m tired, sick, my head hurts and my brother is laying over there possibly dying. So everytime you give me an answer that I don’t like, I’m going to let my friend here do whatever he wants to you. He’s no stable pony, he’s been a wastelander all his life and he can think of a lot of worse things to do to you than I could. Clear?”

His gazed shifted to Noble who had a smirk on his face. “Clear.”

“Okay then first question. Do you anything about the files that were on that terminal over there?” I nodded my head to the terminal that was still laying on the floor by the desk.

He looked between me and the terminal. His eyes shifted nervously. “No.” He was lying.

“Noble.”

Noble grabbed his rifle and slammed the butt into Bronze’s nose. Blood streamed out in an instant.

“Okay yes. We were here a couple of months back. Told to get every file from the executive offices and erase everything on them.”

Noble looked over to me. “That means there might still be a copy of them somewhere.” We both turned back to Bronze expectantly.

When he didn’t say anything Noble slammed him in the head with the rifle again.

“Yes there are still copies of them.”

Noble rolled his eyes. “Yeah of course, we got that. Where are they?” 

The orange pony bit his lip weighing his options. Then found that he didn’t have any. “Apstace has a copy. He keeps records of everything.” 

Apostace, that smug pegasus. I would love to get my hooves on him. “Where can we find him.”

Bronze was sick of getting hit already and answered right away. “He’s leaving for Las Pegasus today, but he’ll be back within a week. He goes out there to meet with the boss occasionally. Hes never gone for long.” 

“And when he gets back? Where will he be?”

“The slave camp. It’s north of the city. Follow the road leaving Junction 26 until you’re out of town. You can see if from the road.”

Noble gave him a suspicious look. “Why are you giving all this up so easily?”

Bonze gave a quick snort. “You managed to capture me and haven't killed me yet. If Apostace found out I not only let myself get caught, but also gave you any information at all, he’ll slap a collar on me the second I walk back into the camp.”

Noble’s smirk came back. “Which means you won’t go back and report any of this to them.”

“They pay well, but I’m not about to become a slave. Fuck no, I’m not going back there.”

I nodded approvingly. “Okay, next question. Those Raiders down there. You paid them with slaves, didn’t you?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t pay them personally if thats what your asking. Apostace gave the slaves as an advance. He was going to give them more if they brought your heads to the camp.”

Thats all I needed to know about that. The reasons for tracking down Apostace were stacking. “I’ve got a question.” Noble said. “How much did you know before about us before you tracked us down?”

Bronze tried to shrug. “Not much. Apostace gave us your tracking tags. He said to kill these three ponies. I knew you were stable dwellers. Other than that, nothing. I just follow orders.”

“I think that’s all I wanted to ask.” I said looking back up to Noble. “Let him go.” 

Noble  cocked an eyebrow at me. “You sure, he could be lying about not reporting to Apostace.” 

“No, I’m not sure. But he can’t do anything to us now. Besides he’ll never make it through the north side without a weapon. Besides, you're gonna make sure he runs the opposite way.” 

Noble let his shoulders sink. “Okay then. Keep a gun on him while I get him out of the armor.” 

I held Noble’s pistol ready to fire if he tried anything. He cooperated with Noble as he fussed with the armor and eventually got him out. “Escort him out of the building. Shoot him if he does anything you don’t like.” I said as I passed his pistol back to him. The two of them walked out slowly. 

I went back and sat next to Rose. “Anything?”

Hermes shook his head. “No change. You guys should get some rest. We might be here awhile.”

Rose nodded. “Thats a good idea. You sure you don’t want to rest first though? I can watch him for a while.” 

Hermes waved her off. “No, I’ll be good. you two get some sleep.”

Rose stood and went over to one of the chairs. They were even more torn now but they would be more comfortable than the floor.

“I’m not gonna be able to sleep. I’m going to go look around.” I said and headed for the door.

Hermes stopped me for a second. “Rivet, you really should at least try to sleep. you need it more than anyone else.”

I looked down at Deadbolt. “I’m not sleeping until I know he’s okay.” Hermes shrugged as I left. I walked around the fiftieth floor for a while. Looking around in all of the offices. The others had already cleared everything out that was worth anything. Eventually I found myself at the elevator.

“I wonder if I could fix this?” I said to myself. I pushed one of the doors open. The elevator was on this floor. All of the lights were on and all of the buttons seemed to be working correctly. From inside, it looked like it was completely fine. There was a hatch in the ceiling. I couldn’t reach it from here. I went and grabbed a chair from one of the offices and pushed it into the elevator. 

I struggled to balance as I reached up to push open the hatch. I slipped and slammed onto the floor of the elevator. I laid on the floor for minute and caught my breath before trying again. This time I was successful in opening it. Climbing into it took a few more tries and a few more falls.

Eventually I got on top of the elevator. The problem with the elevator was a lot simpler than I thought it was. A large piece of metal had fallen from the top of the shaft and jammed itself into the pulleys and wires up top. 

I wasn’t going to reach it with my hooves. Magic would bring my headache back. I thought about it for a minute and figured it was worth it not to have to walk down the entire building. My horn lit up and I pulled the piece of metal out.

Dropping back into the elevator I pressed the button for floor forty-nine. There was a pause, then the doors closed. The elevator lurched to life and lowered to the next floor. The doors opened up. I was alive, it didn’t fall and kill me horribly. Happily I pressed the button to go back up. 

I walked back into the office. “I got the elevator working.”

Hermes perked up at that. “Really? Well that’ll make it easier to get Deadbolt out of here.” Rose was sleeping on one of the chairs. 

I walked over and sat next to Hermes. “Still no change.” He said. I didn’t figure anything would have happened yet. 

Deadbolt annoyed me. He purposely made me angry on a regular basis. We never agree on anything. I never realized how much he actually meant to me. Hermes looked over at me and saw tears starting to swell.

I met his eyes. “Don’t you dare tell him I cried.”

> Siblings
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Noble rejoined us after escorting Bronze out of the building and making sure he was long gone. We had moved the body of the other armored pony into another office. It was early in the morning, a light breeze blew through the broken window.  Rose was still sleeping on the chair. I had managed to convince Hermes to rest while I watched Deadbolt; he laid nestled up against the desk.  Noble had decided to stay awake with me. 

“Any change?” Noble asked. He was looking out the shattered window at the large cityscape around us. It was a still morning, not so much as a radroach was moving through the streets.

“No.” I said standing up away from my unconscious brother. “We need to think of a way we’re going to get him out of here when he wakes up. We can take the elevator down, but after that we still have a pretty long hike back to the Junction.”

He took his hat off and ran a hoof through his mane. “Hermes might have some trouble walking that far too. What about you? You think you can handle the hike?”

I waved him off.”I’ll be fine. I got the elevator working. I doubt walking for a while will be as much of a hassle as that was.”

“You should get some sleep. I’ll watch him for a while.” Noble sat down and leaned against a wall.

We were both tired. I had gotten a little bit of rest, not much, but more than Noble has had today. “No, you’ve been awake a lot longer than I have. I want to be awake when he wakes up.”

He sighed and conceded. “I won’t argue with that. Just keep an eye out. If you even think you hear someone coming, wake me up.”

I gave him a nod and he curled up in his coat. Deadbolt’s chest was still rising and sinking in shallow breaths. He’d been out for hours. Hermes assured me that he would be fine, well as fine as he can be while missing a leg. He just needed rest and would wake up in a few hours. Deadbolt was stubborn, he wasn’t going to let this kill him.

“Uuuugh.” Deadbolt groaned softly as he started to stir.

“Deadbolt!” 

He winced at my shout. “Fuck, do you have to yell?” 

“Sorry. I’ll get you some water.”

“I can’t feel my leg.” 

I froze. He didn’t know he was missing a leg yet. What the hell do you tell someone when they don’t know they’re missing a limb? 

It turns out, nothing. Because when I turned around to face him he was already looking at the place his front right leg should be.

“Deadbolt?”

He didn’t answer at first. He just silently stared at the empty space. “Yeah?” He finally replied distractedly. 

“Are you gonna be okay?” It was a stupid, stupid question but it was all I could think to say.

“I… don’t know.” He said. That wasn’t like him. He should have yelled about how dumb it was of me to even ask that. He’s clearly not going to be “okay.”

Hermes heard us and stirred. “You’re awake. Thats good.” He grabbed onto the top of the desk and used it to haul himself up. He held out a hoof to Deadbolt  “Come on, lets see if you can stand.” Hermes heaved up the larger pony and though he was wobbly and it took him a minute to find his balance, he could stand.

Walking was an entirely different issue. Hermes helped him over to the chair, every step he would stumble forward and need to regain balance. Hermes and I kept him up as he crossed the room and got onto the chair.

Hermes gave Deadbolt a quick examination. He didn’t have a lot of the tools he would normally have access to in the clinic but a field exam was better than nothing. Rose woke while Hermes was giving the exam.

I was asked to wait on the other side of the room so I didn’t crowd either of them. Rose joined and took a seat next to me. “How is he?”

He wasn’t great. He didn’t seem like he was all together. I sighed. “He’s alive.” 

After a few minutes Hermes walked over to us. Deadbolt just went back to looking at this missing leg. “He’ll need some time to come to terms with it, but he should be fine. We’ll need to keep an eye on him. In the mean time we need to get him out of here. We need to get back to the Junction.”

Rose looked across the room. “Someone should wake Noble.” We hadn’t exactly been quiet. Apparently, Noble has a pretty sound sleeper. Rose went to deal with that while Hermes and I helped Deadbolt.

“We’re getting you back to Junction 27. We’ll take it slow. You think you can walk that far?” I asked him.

He slowly looked up to be. “How am I supposed to get down the stairs?”

I shook my head. “Not a problem. I got the elevator working. You just have to worry about moving forward.”

“Help me up.” He said and we raised him to his hooves. Again it took him a second to balance. “I’m not sure if I can get that far.”

Noble hefted up his bags as him and Rose joined us. “Then we’re just gonna have to help ya along.” He grabbed Deadbolt’s bag and added to his own load. Two of us were going to have to double up on bags. Deadbolt wasn’t going to be carrying his and we still had Cure’s as well. As I lifted the other bag I felt someone pull on the other strap.

Rose tore the bag away from me. “No. I’m carrying this one.”

“But…”

“No.”

Deadbolt wasn’t the only one in bad shape. Though he was in the worst. Hermes was recovering from a shot to the chest. We were all tired, a few of us felt sick do to radiation poisoning. I’d been shot a few times in the last twenty-four hours, not to mention have my horn smashed and gave blood. Rose knew that her and Noble were in the best shape of us and while I wanted to argue, she gave me a look that told me not to.

“Alright, lets get moving,” Noble said as he made his way to the door. 

Hermes and I stayed next to Deadbolt as we made our way to the elevator. He leaned against Hermes as we walked. He did a little better than the first time. He was managing a few steps before he would stumble. At this rate it would take a while to walk all the way back to Junction 27, but as long as we didn’t run into trouble we would be fine.

The elevator shifted as we entered. “Uh Rivet, do you really trust this thing?” Noble asked as the doors closed.

“I tested it once. Though that was just me.” I hit the button for the first floor and the elevator lurched to life again. The noises that it made on the way down did not inspire confidence in the integrity of the machine. It creaked and groaned at nearly every floor. Thankfully it didn’t break down with us in it. The doors opened again to the sight of the Stable Tech lobby.

Noble went ahead of us as we exited the Stable Tech building. Having him ahead of us would hopefully keep us out of trouble. It was a straight line to The Junction, but it wasn't visible from here, Signs, overpasses and broken down carriages blocked the view.

The trek through the city was slow. Deadbolt leaned on me as we went. I had to hold him up every fourth step. It was exhausting for him to even travel a few blocks in his condition. We had gone under this part of the city last time we took this road so to me, this was new territory. Hermes said that raiders tend to stay away from the main road so we should be safe from them, but that didn’t stop them before when they were being paid. 

We made frequent stops to let Deadbolt catch his breath. He didn’t talk much, he only said something when we was getting too tired to keep walking. The fact that he wasn’t complaining was starting to worry me.

A drop of water hit my muzzle . I looked up and another landed in my eye. “Ack.” The rain quickly started coming down. We quickly found some shelter under a bridge that passed over the road, a small brick tunnel passed underneath it.

I set Deadbolt down and he sat up against the wall of the tunnel. I shook off as much of the rain as I could. My leather armor was already soaked and clung to me. “Can’t just one thing go our way today?”

“Should we really be under this thing?” Rose said looking up at the roof of the tunnel. There were cracks and a more than a few chunks of brick had already fallen out. “It look like it could go at any time.”

Hermes shrugged. “I’m sure it will be fine. If it was gonna go I’m sure it would have by now.”

“Okay, if you say so…” She said, clearly not convinced.

Hermes did the same thing he had done the other times we stopped and checked how Deadbolt was doing. Rose had started going through the book she found in the museum. I contemplated taking the memory orb out and watching it, but I doubted we would be here long enough to see the whole thing. 

“How’s the book?” I said taking a seat next to Rose. 

She shrugged. “It’s about different kinds of bone fractures and how to splint or treat them. It’s actually pretty interesting.”

“Really? That’s riveting,” I said as sarcastically as I could manage and took a sip from a bottle of water. I gave her a wry look as I did. 

Rose cocked an eye at me. “Did you really take a victory sip at that? It wasn’t even funny. Besides, when was the last time you read a book voluntarily?”

I set the bottle down in defeat. “I thought it was funny…”

Noble came running out of the rain. His hat sagged with water and his coat clung to him like it was part of him. He stood next to Rose and I as he shook off. Somehow I was soaked and Rose was untouched. “Thanks…” I said as I stood up. 

“No problem.” He looked over at Deadbolt on the other side of the tunnel. “How’s he doing?”

I looked over and saw Hermes handing Deadbolt some water. “He’s powering through but we’ve had to stop a lot. How are things ahead?”

“Well there's good news and bad news. Bad news is well… That.” He said pointing over his shoulder at the rain. “The good news is that I made it up to the Junction and saw no one and with the rain I really doubt anyone is going to go out of their way for us. It’s also not much further so we should rest up for a bit and see if Deadbolt can make it in one trip.”

I nodded and Noble went and sat down by himself. He pulled out a small black book and started writing something down. I couldn’t help but going over and asking about it. “What’s that?”

He looked up with the pencil in his mouth, then spit it out. “Oh this? It’s a diary.”

“You have a diary?” 

“What’s wrong with having a diary? I write down things in my life I think are important. It’s a good way to get things out.” He said and picked up the pencil again. 

I guess I didn’t really have a response to that and left him alone. I paced around, resting wasn’t something I wanted to be doing right now. Between worrying about Deadbolt, Hermes not wanting me to crowd him while he was talking to Deadbolt and the boredom of being the only one without something to do during downtime, I really couldn’t sit still.

I kicked one of the bricks that had fallen out of the ceiling. I watched it as it flew over and smashed into the wall. *plink...WROOF* The ceiling gave a sudden and violent shift. “Uh… guys?” Everyone slowly stood up as if doing it slowly was going to stop the inevitable. . 

A large section of bricks came crashing down feet away from me. “RUN!” Rose shouted. Noble and I looked at each other and both bolted to get Deadbolt. Hermes was nearly thrown out of the way as we lifted Deadbolt and started moving. 

The side of the tunnel we entered from shifted again and collapsed behind us. We rushed as fast as we could out of the tunnel. It crumbled behind us. A plume of dust shot out of the rubble as the last of it went just as we passed through it. The rain quickly stifled it.

Rose,Deadbolt and I all glared at Hermes. “Okay so I was wrong about it collapsing. Rivet was the one who caused it.” And just like that the glare turned to me, joined by Noble.

“Maybe we should just get going,” I suggested

Thankfully Noble wasn’t lying when he said we weren’t far from Junction 27. Deadbolt managed to power through until we got to the gates.

The guards saw Deadbolt and sent someone to the clinic to get a stretcher. A doctor came running back with him and we laid Deadbolt down onto it. Noble and the guard were the ones who lifted him and took him to the clinic. 

We brought Deadbolt into the clinic and helped him onto a bed. “Hermes, what the hell did you get into out there? Where’s Cure?” The doctor asked as we entered the clinic. 

Hermes bit back his answer. “I’ll talk to you later Heart. Go get me an IV of the strongest 	painkillers we have.” The way Heart looked at Hermes said that he understood what happened to Cure.Hesitantly he dashed off to get the medicine.

Hermes sighed. “You guys should go back to the hotel. Get some rest. We’ll take care of Deadbolt.”

“What about the supplies we have?” Rose asked.

Hermes dismissed her. “I’ll come by and get them later. Seriously, you guys go relax for a while. Deadbolt’s in good hooves.”

I was reluctant to leave Deadbolt but Hermes assured us that he would be fine. After making it all the way back here, I knew he would be. I just felt like I should stay with him.

Rose, Noble and I went back to the hotel. Noble and I shared a room again, letting Rose get her own this time. Noble was on one of the beds and out before I could even get out of my armor. Getting to sleep was hard. I was nauseous still, I hadn’t eaten anything. My headache had mostly subsided but there was still a small niggling in my head, but it was bearable. That combined with my normally inability to sleep made for a long night.

By the time I woke up the next morning Noble had already woken up and left. It’s strange how I always feel so much more tired in the morning than when I go to bed. I yawned as I limply rolled out of bed. I stood on my hind legs while trying to get my armor on. *Crack!* My head slammed into the wall when I inevitably fell. “Ouch…” I groaned. Thankfully I didn’t hit my horn for once. I knocked on Rose’s door as I left my room. Either she was still asleep, which I doubted, or she was already outside. 

I found the two of them outside at a table. Rose waved me over and brought out an apple for me as I sat down. 

“About time you woke up.” Rose teased. 

I gave her a sarcastic chuckle. “Either of you two visit Deadbolt?”

Noble nodded. “Yeah, I helped Hermes bring the supplies over to the clinic this morning. He was still sleeping.”

“What did they say about the supplies?” 

Noble tipped his hat up. “Well they were happy we brought so much back with us. They were even happier to hear that was just a fraction of it.”

“What about what happened to Cure?” 

He shrugged. “Donno, I assume Hermes told them last night. Anyway, I’m leading a group out to collect some more here in a little while.”

I was about to tell him I was coming, but he knew I would and shot me down before I could even open my mouth. “No, Rivet. Hermes told me to relay something to you. he said to tell you to ‘take a fuckin break.’ I think were his words.”

Rose was nodding approvingly. “You’re to go back up to your room and take it easy today.”

Noble turned around a pulled something out of his bag. It was a clear bag filled with an orange liquid. “Radaway, you drink it and it cleans your body of radiation. It’s better if you down it all at once, it tastes awful. Oh, got something else for ya.” He reached back in and pulled out a shining silver pistol. “To replace the one you lost.”

“We barely had the caps for the hotel rooms. How did you afford this?”

He chuckled at me. “I sold all the guns those raiders in Stable-Tech had. Picked ‘em up after I took bronze out of the place.”

“Theres no way you fit all of those guns in your bag with all of those medical supplies in there too.”

He laughed again. “You haven't been in the wasteland long. You learn to pack things together nice and tight. Anyway, its forty-five caliber, it’s got a lot more power than that tiny nine millimeter you were carrying before.”

“Thanks,” I said as I picked up the gun. 

Rose clapped her hooves together. “Alright, now back to your room. I’ll check on Deadbolt later and tell you how he’s doing.” And with that she shooed me back to my room.

I laid in bed for a while inspecting the gun that Noble had bought me. It wasn’t immaculate, but it was one of the best maintained weapons I had yet to see. I did find a small bit of rust starting to form on the bottom, under the trigger. I looked up at my horn, the headache had faded but levitating objects still stung. I had no idea how an actual spell would effect me, probably poorly. 

My horn lit up. The pistol was engulfed by the glow of my magic. Then...nothing, absolutely nothing happened. My head didn’t explode into pain, nor did the slight rust on the gun clean itself. I tried again, same result. Then again, nothing. I wasn’t particularly great with magic as it was, now I couldn’t even use the one spell that I was good at.

“Great…” I moaned as I let my head fall back onto the pillow. Tossing the gun aside I saw my bag was open. Hermes and Noble probably looked through it to get the medical supplies I was carrying. I could see the glass memory orb laying inside.

Again, I almost made the mistake of grabbing it with magic. Instead I just levitated the entire bag over to me and felt a stinging in my head as I did. I pulled the orb out and set it on the bed. I didn’t have a chance to finish watching this yet. I move around a bit and made sure I was comfortable. I touched my horn to it and winced at the sting of touching the broken horn. Then sent a spark into the orb. Again the room was torn away and replaced with the office. 

I watched the scene play out again. Applejack surprising her sister with a visit. The two politely talking between each other about their work, Applejack tip-toeing around something she actually wanted to say. 

“Applebloom, I didn’t just come to talk. I need your help with something.” Applejack finally said. She wasn’t looking Applebloom in the eye. Whatever she wanted, it wasn’t something she was proud of.

“What is it Sis? You know you can trust me,” Applebloom said trying to comfort her sister.

Applejack reached back into her bag and placed a tiny black chip on the table. 

Applebloom looked down at the little computer chip. “You’re gonna need to explain sis…”

“Applebloom, I can trust you with anything, right?” Applejack asked. 

I could feel Appleblooms confusion. “Uh, yeah, of course. You know that.”

Applejack took a deep sigh. “This is a key. What it opens is something that I hate. I wish I could tell you what it is but I need you to trust me. Hide it, I don’t ever want to see this thing again unless there are no other options.”

Applebloom looked between her sister and the chip, more confused than before. I mirrored that confusion. “What are you talking about?”

The world ripped away again and I found myself back in the hotel. I grabbed the orb and shook it. “Why would it end there?” I tossed it and it thudded softly on the other bed in the room. “Dammit, so close, again.”

I laid in the bed thinking for a while after I watched the orb. I thought about a lot of things: who were those two mares? Why were they important? Why did Applejack want her sister to hide the chip. But mostly I thought about something Applejack said: “I can trust you with anything.” I mouthed to myself. Those sisters were the opposite of Deadbolt and myself. Why though?

I couldn’t even remember. It had been so long. We’ve hated each other longer than I can actually remember. I felt selfish. Deadbolt had been trying to look out for me, and he lost a leg because I refused to listen to him. Slowly, I got up from the bed. I was going to go talk to him.

I make my way out to the lot and across to the clinic. Rose was sitting next to the bed Deadbolt was at, Hermes had just come over to check on him. 

“Rivet, what are you doing up? I told you to rest,” Rose said, giving me a stern look. 

“You two mind if I talk to my brother, alone.” 

Hermes shrugged and walked out. Rose looked at me, obviously a little confused on why I would ever want to be alone with Deadbolt. “Um, okay. I’ll be back at the hotel if you need me.”

“What do you want, Rivet?” Deadbolt asked as I closed the curtains around us. 

I took a deep breath, then sighed. “I wanted to say, I’m sorry.”

I was getting a lot of confused looks today. “For what?”

“For everything. Being difficult all the time, refusing to listen to anyone. And I don’t just mean recently. I’m sorry for always being so difficult back in the stable. I was thinking about something you said back in Marefield. This isn’t the stable anymore. I want to bury the hatchet.”

I don’t remember the last time I saw Deadbolt speechless. “Thanks, Rivet.” Was all he said.

I sat down next to the bed. “We’ve been at eachother's throats for so long. I don’t remember what caused us to hate eachother so much.”

Deadbolt thought for a moment. “I think I do.” He started. “It was around the time Dad died. I took over as head of the maintenance team. I think it was just stress, I was kind of an ass to everyone. I didn’t know what I was doing and I needed your help.”

“Why didn’t you just ask?”

He scoffed.“You know me. I was too proud to ask my little brother for help and you were always annoyed that I was giving you a lot of extra work without talking to you about it.”

I sighed again. “Sorry, I don’t I think ever realized how stressed you were.” We were both stubborn. He needed help keeping the stable running and I did nothing but complain. We just let that fester for years. “Hey, what was Dad like? You knew him a lot better than I did.”

Deadbolt gave me a surprised look. “you weren’t that young when he died.”

“Yeah but he was always working. I barely ever saw him. He died shortly after I got my cutie mark so I didn’t even really get to work with him.” 

He shrugged. “Not a lot to say. He was nice enough, worked hard, don’t really know what else to say about him.”

I stood up and took a step toward the curtain. “I’ll let you rest.” I paused before swinging the curtain open and turned back to him. “I just need to know: Do you blame me?”

His face turned from a half smile to a scowl. “No,I blame those bastards that drug us out into this hell hole.”

“Thanks, Deadbolt.” I closed closed the curtain behind me. 

Rose was waiting for me when I got back to the hotel. “What was that about?”

“Don’t worry about it. I just needed to talk to my brother,” I said, giving her a reassuring smile.

“Did you at least ask him about the lock picking?”