> Fallout: Equestria - Knights of Day
>  by sirustalcelion
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Prologue and Chapter 1
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


Fallout: Equestria 


Knights of Day


By Sirustalcelion


Prologue

Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria…

War. War never changes. Such a blisteringly simple fact, but a thousand years of peace and prosperity under the rule of Princess Celestia had caused ponies to forget the horrors of war. When the world finally exploded in a devastating war of attrition, they were utterly unprepared for the cost both in physical terms and the damage to their collective national psyche.

Despite this, pre-war ponies were not entirely pacifists. Equestria had long maintained a small but elite military. These noble stallions and mares formed what was known as the Royal Guard and its airborne sister, the Equestrian Skyguard. To the public, they largely served a ceremonial role, but they had also been trained to take care of threats to Equestria, whether from an occasional dragon or the rare marauding band of griffin sky pirates.

Unfortunately, Celestia’s Royal Guard was completely unprepared for the needs of industrial scale warfare, with entire nations’ populations thrown to feed the machine of war. And so, as the ranks of ponies swelled, these proud soldiers vanished, absorbed by the larger Equestrian Army or simply killed in action. The final blow to their organization came when Princess Celestia finally abdicated her throne, and Luna’s own guards took the once-proud position for themselves.

But the Royal Guards were not forgotten.

Instead, they and their families were gathered by Stable-Tec and given a stable of their own in which to wait out the necromantic holocaust, just one of the hundreds of social experiments that Stable-Tec had tried.  

A hundred years later, after the balefire and residual necromantic energies retreated to acceptable levels, their thirteen-ton door was one of the first to reopen…


Chapter 1

Stupid

“Now Atom is a youngster and pretty hard to handle
But we better step in and stop that scandal...”


The bracing wind ruffled my mane. I savored it, and the clean air refreshed my senses. Stretching against my battle-saddle, I allowed the breeze to flow through it and dry the sweat that had gathered in my coat. I slowly picked my way from rock to rock, careful to keep my hooves from indenting the hock-deep snow of the mountaintop.

This was a stealth mission, after all.

It wasn’t long before I found my first mark, a zebra scout. I just needed to kill him and get into the base, where I could set my charges to destroy the anti-air weapons and allow my Skyguard Pegasi comrades to attack this station en masse, claiming a victory for Celestia. Straightforward.

His black and white striped coat made it difficult to pick him out between the white snow and granite cliffs, just as my own white coat aided my camouflage. He stepped out onto a concrete ledge, silhouetted against the clear blue sky, and I readied the saddle, my tongue sliding over the breath-heated bit. I pulled it forward a bit to extend the distance at which my bullets would intersect, a distance which coincided with my mark’s chest. I pondered the shot, keeping my breath minimal and steadying my beating heart.

He muttered something into his radio, his eyes sweeping the landscape, completely missing me. He’d made his report. Now was the time! Fire!

Instead, my mind wandered. I didn’t know much zebra, but I could pick out a few of the unfamiliar words. Area (something something) clear (something something) Centurion. I wondered who the centurion was. What kind of pony – zebra – was he? Did he have the same calculating, smiling disposition of my own General Orders? Perhaps this zebra was like me, simply doing his duty, following the mandates of his country and his faith? Did he like to tell those fantastical zebra tribal tales? Questions abounded in my mind, and with each passing thought my desire to fire lessened. Eventually he turned around, continuing on his patrol path.

It occurred to me that I need not fight him at all. While it was impossible to simply walk past this zebra, I was certain that if I just had a chance to talk, pony-to-zebra, we could resolve our problems. I could even start a zebra sub-culture movement that was pony-friendly! My delusions of potential grandeur ran wild for a moment.

There was nothing for it. I released the bit in my mouth, lowered it, then stepped out of the shadows and onto the concrete platform, making sure my hooves crunched in the snow. Thus alerted, the zebra legionary spun around, looking at me with blank, expressionless eyes. “Dedi,” I said, or ‘I surrender,’ in the Propoli tongue. At least, I hoped that was what I was saying.

I didn’t even blink as he opened fire, and I heard the ‘waah-wah-waaaaah’ of a trombone signaling my failure.

The sky pixelated and bloomed into white, a clean horizontal gash opening up in it ready to bear my consciousness away, back into reality. I felt the comforting fizzle of my nerves being disconnected from the Stable-Tec Sim Pod, and squinted as my eyes adjusted to the lower lighting in the room.

“Pardon my language, but WHAT in the HOOF was THAT?” My instructor, Smoothbore was positively livid at me. I climbed down from the sim pod with a calm demeanor, no sense in getting worked up. I’d only failed my graduation program, after all. “A Guard never surrenders, especially not to some measly magical projection AI!”

This wasn’t the first time I had received this run down. This was, after all, the third time I had failed this test. She went on to criticize nearly everything I had done in that short simulation. The lecture went in one ear and out the other, and I allowed my thoughts to wander. It’s not like the test mattered for somepony like myself. The C.A.T. (Cutie-mark aptitude test, useful for determining careers for ponies like me who either were late bloomers in their cutie marks, or, like me, had cutie marks that were utterly useless in determining a career path) that I had taken last year decreed that I was destined to be the stable chaplain. It was an important role, I was assured. I was vital to the morale of the stable, assuring that our fellow guards knew that there was more to our lives than simply waiting and endless drills inside the narrow halls of our stable.

In reality, it was a useless position, and everypony, especially me, knew it. I had hoped to be some sort of technician, providing a tangible, vital service to my fellow ponies, even if I had neither the inherent aggression or the physical aptitude for frontline military work. I even learned how to work the replicator talisman, a recycler that turned waste of all kinds into usable food, clothing, whatever.  But both the CAT and my cutie mark suggested I was good for only one thing, talking, and one job that involved primarily talking was Stable Chaplain. Though, as I had been told by the Senior Chaplain Cross, the position actually was more about listening than talking.

And speaking of listening, I hadn’t paid attention to a word Smoothbore had said. “…useless.” She finished, echoing my own self-pitying reverie. She gave me a narrow look. “Have you even paid a lick of attention to what I’m saying?”

Honesty compelled me to shake my head. Stable chaplains shouldn’t lie, and in any case Smoothbore was something of a lie detection spell in pony form. She face hoofed. “Just... just get going. I’ll talk with you later. When you’re in the mood to listen.” She waved me out, ready to invite the next candidate in for this round of testing.




+ + +




That ‘later’ was now. Smoothbore looked over a sheaf of papers containing documentation of everything I had ever done in Stable Seven worth noting. She couldn’t go past a page without sighing. “What am I going to do with you, Silver?” she said. Smoothbore had been my teacher longer than I could remember. Stable Seven had two teachers, Chaplain Cross and Smoothbore, and together we stable-dwelling ponies were ensured a thorough education.

“Let me pass anyway?” I suggested helpfully. She gave a gentle smile, a sharp contrast from her drill sergeant mode from earlier today.

“No, I can’t just do that. By your test scores alone, you should be on your way to Captain by now. In two thirds of the test, they’re better than Bolt Action’s. But you’re utterly failing the last third! Sparring, explosives, the simulation, all zeroes!”

I gave a wry grin. I liked the way I had failed the explosives test, the objective of which was to get from one room to another through a locked door by using as few materials as possible. Instead of blowing up the door and letting the repair talisman regenerate it like usual, I simply knocked on it and told the test examiner on the other side that the exam was over, and he opened it himself. It had not gone over well. I still argued that I had achieved the objective perfectly. “A sixty-six per cent is still a ‘D,’ though, right? You can pass me. I know Click Clack passed with less.”

It didn’t work that way, though, and the look on Smoothbore’s face reminded me that she knew it, too. Nopony else had zeroes in the combat portions of the test, and nopony could pass if they had a zero in any one area. It was just unusual that anypony with a zero in anything both existed and was still averaging a passing grade.

I watched Smoothbore carefully. She was considering it, which was more than I had expected. I needed to press a bit more. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I shouldn’t try to press you. You’ve always been such a good teacher, and I don’t want to burden you any more than you already are. I know you have your forehooves full and your hindlegs tied.” Careful now, Silver, don’t push too much. None of this was untrue, of course. Now was just a good time to repeat it. “It’s just I can’t seem to bring myself to actually hurt anypony. I know what to do, I just can’t, y’know, do it. Is that so bad?”

“I know what you’re trying to do, SIlver.”

“That doesn’t mean it won’t work.”

She sighed again and read over my test scores. Very few ponies ever broke rules in Stable Seven, and retribution was normally swift but fair. Smoothbore was not a rule-breaking type of pony, and neither was I. This wasn’t working, I needed to change my tack a little. I’d have to be a little bit more creative. “I don’t want to break any rules, but maybe we can work something out. I’m supposed to be the Chaplain, after all. It’s not a fighting role. I don’t need to be able to kill a zebra or anything. Maybe we could change the sim, replace the ponies with robots, or something. Then I could pass, I’m sure.”

She put the papers down. “I’ll think about it. I’m not saying anything more. Dismissed.”

Well, that was all I was going to get for now. Turning, I trod out of the old classroom.




+ + +

“…and it’s not like I don’t have the skills, I just can’t do it! It goes against everything we teach!” Senior Chaplain Cross nodded, listening. I had been giving him an earful for at least a half hour. Most of it was just me thinking out loud. Cross didn’t seem to mind, as long as I worked while I ran my mouth. I had already swept and mopped both the chapel and the nearby hallways, and now I was cleaning the stubborn dust out of the corners carved into a statue of the Goddess holding an infant Princess Celestia. It just seemed wrong to emphasize all those principles of getting along and finding peaceful solutions to your problems when you had to be able to kill to earn full Stable citizenship.

Chaplain Cross didn’t need to say anything, I knew the counter-arguments to my position. Soldiering provisions had arisen quickly in Faustian philosophy, and were readily available in the library at the back of the chapel.

Was it too much to ask to be allowed to actually follow the peaceful lessons that Princess Celestia had given to her guard centuries ago? The irradiated surface outside the stable seemed adequate proof that I was right. Cross still didn’t say anything. Well, not like it mattered, he had passed all his tests the first try. I didn’t have to listen to him.

Ugh. Darn it, I just wanted to be a good pony. Being a good pony meant never hurting another pony, right? Being a good pony also meant doing your duty. Right now my duty was to kill another equine in simulation. I knew it wasn’t a real zebra. But he was programmed to be as realistic as possible, and it still felt like killing. That was half the point of the simulation.

I rubbed the statue harder, using the edge of my hoof to get into a dusty corner underneath the Goddess’ red mane. I pushed at it, taking out my frustration at being a failure at something anypony in the stable could do.



Chaplain Cross cleared his throat and opened his mouth to speak, and I immediately looked up at him. Maybe he had something, some clever quote of a philosopher pony long dead, that would resolve my problem. “Don’t scrub too hard. You might break it, or chip the paint.”

Well, that was profound. Chaplain Cross got up to leave, heading for the door in the back of the small chapel, probably planning to go get some dinner. Making sure he wasn’t looking, I stepped back off the statue’s pedestal, and focused on the motes of dust. A blue aura appeared around them and my horn, and I magically pulled them away. This was unproductive.

I let out an exasperated sigh and hit my head against the nearest wall, hard enough to sting, but not hard enough for my horn to dent the wall. Maybe I could get the graduation stuff resolved without hurting anypony, and put all of that behind me. After that, I wouldn’t ever need to shoot anything even resembling a pony. It’s not like the stable was going to go to war with anypony.  




+ + +


I chewed down my nutrition chips, careful to keep my mouth full so that I wouldn’t have to discuss anything with my fellow trainees.  My last two failures had been fast-spreading news, the first one earning me pity, the second earning gaffes at my expense. My ears were perked to listen to the conversations around me, though I didn’t actually attempt to engage in any myself. There was no mention of my test performance, which simultaneously relieved and annoyed me. I hated being the butt of jokes or pity, but I couldn’t deny that I enjoyed the attention of the other stable ponies in equal measure.

Instead there was nervous murmuring about life outside, something opening, and scouting teams.  That was unusual. Ponies in the stable rarely, if ever, acknowledged that there was a world beyond our thirteen-ton gear-shaped door. It made the monotony of life inside our narrow grey corridors easier to bear.

An ice blue earth pony mare sat down across from me. Her name was Bolt Action, a former classmate up until three months ago when she, and the rest of my class, passed the graduation program in the sim pod. She eyed me for a moment, and then decided not to say what I knew was on the tip of her tongue. Instead, she simply said, “Did’ja hear the news, Silver?”

“What news?” I grunted, sure I was about to hear directly from her whatever the other ponies were talking about.

Bolt Action continued, “The announcement over the P.A. The vault is able to open now, it says.”

That was news indeed. I swallowed the imitation hay fry I had been chewing. “So that’s it, then? We get to go and recolonize the wasteland, ‘forging anew the glories of Equestria’?” I quoted the advertising material that was scattered on the remaining posters left over from when the vault was first constructed, a hundred and twenty years ago. 

“Maybe,” she said through a mouthful of Fancy Buck snack cakes. Replicated, of course. “But General Orders isn’t going to ship us all out. Not right away. She’s sending out scout teams.  Find out what we’re up against. She put out volunteer signup lists on her door. Yours truly already signed up, of course.”

I grunted again, demonstrating the eloquence my name, Silver Tongue, advertised. And yes, I’ve heard every dirty joke relating to tongues and the things that a pony can do with them. I was just lucky my cutie mark was more abstract than having a tongue on my butt.

“Don’t act that way, I’m telling you this for a reason. You should sign up.” Her amber eyes glared into my own, her eyebrows furrowed in concern.

I grunted again, and chomped on another replicated hay fry. All my essay writing and class speeches went into it, a genuine polished gem of communication skills.

“Look, I know you failed again. I don’t care if you’re upset and want to wallow in self-pity for the next month until you can re-fail the test again. If you’re serious about wanting to help the stable, you should sign up.”

I opened my mouth to say something barbed and potentially witty, but whatever uncalled-for insult I was about to give died on my lips. Instead, I simply said, “Aren’t the signups full? I figure everypony would want to take a little vacation outside.” And anypony else would be more qualified, I silently added. Buck, was I going to mope all day?

“Why don’t you get off your flank and go check for yourself?”  Before I could grunt yet another reply, she said, “I’m serious, just go sign up. Will you do that? I gave a halfhearted little nod. With that, she picked up her now empty tray and walked off. When had she had time to actually eat? I wondered. I watched her black power armor under-barding disappear through a powered blast door, the same as all the doors here in the stable.

She did have a point. And in any case, walking and making excuses for myself was better than sitting and making excuses for myself.




+ + +


In short order, I was standing outside the Overmare’s office, reading the bulletin board listings. In the center, framed, was a transcript by somepony named Scootaloo, describing our stable’s function and project goal. It had been marked, ‘TOP SECRET: OVERMARE EYES ONLY.’ It then went on to describe how this was a military stable, and all members of Stable Seven were either Royal Guard, or the families of the Guard. It went on to say how this stable should follow a military command hierarchy, and should be completely open and honest with the ponies of Stable Seven. Guess they didn’t count on the first Overmare-General taking the ‘open and honest’ bit to heart, and posting this for everypony to see. Every colt and filly wrote dozens of essays on this particular document, it was as well known to us as the Oath of Service. Next to it were eleven framed photographs, taken once every ten years, each one showing roughly six hundred ponies. They were either predominantly white-coated, blue-maned ponies like myself, or else dark brown and ash-maned ponies. More colorful ponies, like Bolt Action and her brothers, were definitely the minority, although our books declared that ponies normally came in all colors imaginable.

Browsing over forgotten entrepreneurial ads (‘quarters cleaned, only one chocolate ration card apiece’) and ancient posters showing ponies in power armor, I finally came to a pair of lined pieces of paper, titled simply, ‘scouting duty volunteers.’ There were a large number of names on the first list, but the second one was nearly empty. Looking closely, I could see why. The first list was also labeled ‘short term,’ while the second, ‘extended.’ Apparently lots of ponies wanted to visit the outside, but only for a short while. I couldn’t blame them.

There were only two names on the second list, Bolt Action, written in stiff, earth-pony lip-writing, and Mobilization, in neat, regimented unicorn script. I glared hard at the name. Mobilization was the overmare’s son, and everypony expected him to take over his mother’s job when she retired. You could tell that she expected him to as well; the name Mobilization was just begging to have General attached to the front. I had never had more than two lines of conversation with him. A pony with more skill in writing and talking than hoof to hoof combat was beneath the notice of most ponies besides the teacher.

Two-pony scouting teams were the norm, and if there were only two names, both better qualified than myself, then I was unlikely to get the position. Good! I signed my name in my own small, flowing script, then again on the longer list. If all went as expected, both would be turned down, I would have kept my promise to Bolt Action, and I could just go right back to feeling sorry for myself for failing the sim pod simulation!  Today was really looking up.

I replaced the quill into the ink dispensing pot attached to the bottom of the bulletin board and turned to make my exit back down the steel steps, passing Security and its confinement cells, and the Overmare’s private residence, a nice pair of rooms roughly the same as anypony else’s private quarters. I began to descend the steel steps, the first of four flights to get to my own quarters next to the stable chapel, when I heard the tnk-tnk of metal-clad hooves behind me. Nothing particularly unusual about that in a stable full of power armored ponies. I continued down, and a shadow fell over me, cast by the sterile magical lights that lined every hallway in Stable Seven.

“I saw you sign up for the extended scouting mission.”

I continued walking away from the voice and shadow. “Yeah?”

A steel-clad hoof reached over my neck and spun me around with the awkward jerkiness of somepony still getting used to wearing power armor, and I was whirled face-to-face with the dark brown coat, yellow eyes, and white mane of Mobilization.  He was wearing his armor and its accompanying armored pip-buck, but he wasn’t wearing his helmet. Not that I blamed him, those things could be awfully stifling. His face was all too close for personal comfort, and I could smell his sour-milk breath. “That’s MY mission,” he snorted.

“Fine! Good for you!” So far, I had no idea why he was telling me this.

“It’s my mission…and it’s Bolt Action’s mission,” he shoved me down the stairs, into the landing that marked the halfway point. My horn struck the armored light casing, causing my head to throb. “Get it?”

I was beginning to get an idea, yes. I still didn’t see what the issue was, and the headache wasn’t aiding my logical reasoning. I mean, maybe he wanted to go out with Bolt Action or something. If he did, he should just ask her and get it over with. I certainly wasn’t standing in the way. There were any number of reasonable solutions that one could arrive at if – WHAM!

Iron shod hooves slammed into my gut, knocking the wind out of me. I collapsed gasping for a couple seconds. This was not a situation to let my mind wander in!

I estimated that I was no match for nearly anypony in the vault normally, and with the added hydraulic and magical strength of the power armor, I had no chance of actually winning this fight. Instead, as I held my breath for a second to stabilize my diaphragm, my eyes scanned the stairwell for the smooth black orb of a security camera. There wasn’t one. I needed to get to the hallway for that to happen. Smart move on the part of Mobilization, but nopony was doubting his intelligence. His reasoning, on the other hoof…  “So what’s (wheeze) this (wheeze, swallow) this got to do with me?” I gasped out, hoping that the conversation would allow me the chance I needed to make it down the rest of those stairs.

“Don’t give me that, you signed up for this!” His hooves shoved me against the cold wall, pressing against my sternum.

That was untrue. I hadn’t signed up for any fights, just a working vacation in the irradiated lands that surrounded Stable Seven. I didn’t voice those thoughts, however, as I threw my weight sideways in a bid for the opening at the bottom of the stairwell. I tumbled hock-over-horn sideways down the stairs, impacting every third unyielding steel tread, and landed unceremoniously in a splayed heap on the polished floor. My eyes opened and found the blessed black orb at the far end of the hall. Objective accomplished, though my tactics so far had done more damage to me than Mobilization had.

Swaggering down the steps, Mobilization was in no apparent rush to get me. My horn flashed blue as I telekinetically searched for a weapon I could use, and my mind alighted on my Pipbuck. I hadn’t given it a second thought in the past week or so, but one rarely-used feature included in the suite of Pipbuck tools was an audio recorder and player. I flicked it into record, hopefully it would include more than grunts and sounds of movement. I could give all this evidence to security, and probably get Mobilization court martialed for this. It seemed like a sound plan, in theory. My magical aura dissipated from my horn, and I struggled to my hooves.

I didn’t quite get all the way there, because, seeing that I had no weapon, Mobilization jumped on me and I was down again. “I don’t care what you were trying to accomplish, putting your name on the list, but a few broken limbs will ensure that you are removed from it!”

Well, so far my plan of ‘take hits and get Mobilization back later’ was going spectacularly. If only I could get out of the ‘take hits’ part. But if he just wanted my name off the list, he should have simply asked. I didn’t want to be on that stupid list anyway, except for the promise I had made to Bolt Action. I opened my mouth to say as much, but was rewarded by a swift metal hoof to the jaw. Ow. Caramel-colored magic lifted me up and threw me against the wall. I tried again to stand up, this time with no more plan than ‘get away,’ my former plan too painful to continue pursuing, but I was stamped back down. Careful hooves captured a foreleg, one holding it in place while the other began to attempt bending my joint in a manner quite opposite to its function. My mind raced. “Wait!” I wheezed. “You don’t need to do this! I didn’t wanna be on that stupid list anyway! Bolt put me up to it!” Wow, way to give away your friends there, Silver, I chided myself. I prepared a mental retort to myself when the pain, instead of going away, redoubled. The news had not helped my case as much as I thought it would.

“Exactly,” he grunted simply. His logic was incomprehensible to me at this point.

“Stop!” shouted another voice, this one female and quite distinct from either of ours. The tension in my knee did not decrease, though it stopped increasing. The voice was familiar, and though that descriptor applied to practically every voice in Stable Seven, this one was particularly relevant. The position I was being held in did not allow me to turn and look, but the advancing tnk-tnk of Bolt Action was all I needed to hear. “The buck are you doing, Moby?” I assumed that was some kind of nickname.

“I am thwarting this traitor, of course! I heard him threatening the Overmare!” 

Huh. I had to admit, if our situations had been reversed, I would have had a much better excuse ready.

“Silver? He can’t even hurt a VR zebra, much less the Overmare!” Yeah! Score one for my incompetence! I focused on my trapped leg. Maybe if I twisted it in just the right fashion, I could extricate myself from Mobilization’s grip. I tried just that, and was rewarded with just a tighter vice for my efforts.

“You’re – you’re with him?” Mobilization’s tone of voice set off alarm bells in my head. A short pause. “Then you’re against us, too!” Us? What? Mobilization’s train of thought was getting even hard to foll-POP! My knee apparently decided that it couldn’t take anymore, and tore out of its socket with a sickening crunch. I gritted my teeth and hissed in pain, although it hadn’t hurt as much as I’d anticipated it would. It was more distant…disconnected. Like my mind couldn’t wrap itself around the fact that the bone was a good six inches away from where it normally was. It was still more painful than anything else I’d experienced in my sheltered life in Stable Seven.

I heard metal clanging on metal above me as Bolt Action leapt on top of Mobilization. I finally pulled away, focusing on the pain in my knee and cannon bone and extricating myself. A hoof fight between power armors was likely to leave me with more resemblance to cream filling than pony. I rolled out of the way and hobbled to my hooves. They were both trading scarily accurate blows, fighting with inequine precision and reflexes. I gaped for a moment, until I realized that they were fighting from the combat nirvana of SATS (Stable-Tec Arcane Targeting Spell), a spell which my own Pipbuck also had. Launching into it at any time might have given me the time I needed to think of a way out of the situation, something I mentally catalogued for the unlikely event that I ever got into another situation like this. I could have facehoofed, it was so obvious. I would have, too, if I had not been stopped by a sudden fire in the joint I had been actively ignoring that brought me back to the present. I needed to get back up those stairs, and get help from Security. It wasn’t that far away, after all, though really, it was much farther than I wanted to go on three hooves. I began to hobble over in that direction.

Immediately I tripped and collapsed back on the floor, a sharp stabbing shooting again through my unfortunate foreleg. What? A lavender magical rope had appeared, and had me trussed like a baby dragon. I looked around, and more had appeared to tie up both Bolt Action and Mobilization, suspending both of them with what must have been a feat of telekinetic weightlifting.

A power-armored unicorn stallion, his horn’s magical aura visible even through the helmet, approached, flanked by two more power-armored earth ponies. Blue and yellow stripes marked them as Stable Security. “I don’t care who started it, what was where, or whose coltfriend this is.” The stallion’s voice was slightly tinny through his helmet, “But there will be no denting those suits!” He pulled us all off our feet, depositing me over the back of the mare on his left, sans rope, and carrying the other two roughly suspended in lavender magical auras where their hooves could find no purchase.

Nopony said a word as they delivered us back up those same stairs and took us into the confinement cells, with their magically reinforced steel bars. Both Mobilization and I had received conical magic impeders screwed onto our horns, the draining effect pulling at my conscious mind. The Overmare was waiting for us already. I supposed I shouldn’t be surprised, when her office and living space were directly across the hall. The mare who had carried me retrieved a dark purple healing potion from the nearby restroom first aid kit, and without my magic and only one forehoof working, I had to lap it out of a bowl like a pet. Humiliating.

The Overmare watched, with an arched eyebrow, both the footage caught on security and the accompanying audio from my Pipbuck. That was probably more embarrassing to me than anypony else, and much more humiliating than the dog dish full of purple liquid. What had I been thinking? I should have just slid into SATS and delivered a strong buck to Mobilization’s horn. That plan was much easier to pull off in my head than it probably would have been against the real Mobilization. She rested back on her haunches, her expression calculating but otherwise unreadable. “Well,” she began slowly, “I think it’s safe to say that my son Mobilization will most certainly not be leaving on the extended scouting mission. This behavior is entirely unacceptable.” Her yellow eyes held their gaze unblinkingly on me the entire time she spoke. “Mobilization, you will return to your room, where I will administer appropriate justice.”

Appropriate justice? He broke my leg! “Ma’am?” I said, as Mobilization trotted out, and her arched eyebrow bade me speak. “He’s going to be grounded? He broke my bu—my leg!” I almost said ‘bucking leg,’ but not only was it bad manners, it was also inaccurate. My bucking legs were my hind ones. 

The dark brown-grey mare said nothing and turned to leave, her eyes lingering on my mending leg until the last possible second. Then, “Scope, Baton, deliver them to my office as soon as that one’s leg mends.”

The two earth ponies saluted until the pneumatic door closed again. Then they broke off and went into a small room to the side. Their break room, I supposed.  I conscientiously lowered my head back to drink the last of the potion, gripping the bowl with my teeth and tilting it with a twitch of my jaw. The bitter, syrupy mass trickled down my throat, and I could feel my knee healing. This stuff really was a miracle drug, the joint was almost as good as new! The pain receded a bit, but it would stay well after the actual injury had healed.  The last drop trickled down my throat.

A hoof struck the now empty metal bowl from my mouth and it clattered to the prison floor. I looked at the only possible source of that hoof, Bolt Action. “What the hell, Silver?” she shouted. Her powder blue cheeks were positively purple with the blood rushing to them. She had removed her power armor before hitting me, thank goodness, I didn’t want to be taking any more healing potions today.

“Ow! What?” I snapped back.

“Why did you have to go get yourself into trouble?” She was pretty steamed, that was for sure. “I gave the Overmare’s son a black eye! A black eye! The Overmare’s son!” She pointed her hoof at her eye as if it would emphasize the point.

I’ll admit, I didn’t quite get what the big deal was about a black eye. Mobilization had just broken my knee, and even after the healing potion, I still had bruises on my withers, croup, and one on my dock that would make it painful to sit for a while. Healing potions only cared about serious and immediate injuries. With all that inequine SATS accuracy, a black eye was getting off lightly. Bolt Action was unscathed, her close-cropped fiery mane perhaps a bit messier than usual. “So what?”

“I’ve never been in trouble before! Well, I have, but not anything serious like this!” she amended. Bolt Action was the top of our class, and I’d never known her to get in trouble. I’d never been in serious trouble before either, so I didn’t have anything useful to say to that. The two of us put together had a cleaner record than the constantly polished walls of the stable hallways, today excluded of course. I’d never seen the Overmare-General up close before, either. Her reaction was a complete unknown. “Dangit, why did I jump in there? You should be able to fight for yourself!”

I could have tried to come up with something witty and biting, but honestly, I ached too much to retort to that last bit. It was humiliating to watch a video of myself just sit lie down and get kicked like a puppy, and then get rescued by a mare. Even a mare in power armor. “I dunno,” I said helpfully.

The statement hung in the air, needing a follow-up explanation. I still didn’t have anything witty to say, so I went with the truth, “But I’m glad you did.”

That seemed to take the fight out of her. Her cheeks faded back to their normal powder blue, and she smiled thinly at me.

Thank you, brain. My brain was now one-for-two on the talking myself out of bad situations counter. Still a failing grade, but better than zero.

 Just then, the security ponies came back out of their break room. “Leg healed?” asked the mare. I nodded. The healing potion had done its job, and my leg was now functional. It was still tender, though, and I expected that my cannon bone wouldn’t be in top shape for at least a week.

They opened the cell door –which wasn’t locked, apparently – and we obediently rose to our hooves and trod out. The security ponies didn’t even follow us as we walked the dozen or so yards to the Overmare-General’s office. I guess they figured we wouldn’t run. They were right. Not that there was anywhere to run to.

I plodded past the bulletin board, and noticed that the long term scouting volunteer list had been removed from the bulletin board. In its place was a faded old Stable-Tec poster. I could barely make out a rearing power-armored stallion, whatever its written message long worn off in the constant light of the Stable Seven hallway. I turned my head back away in disgust. I really had seen enough power armor for one day. Instead, I looked at the fiery mane of my companion. It was fairly short, as was every active trainee. My own longer mane was a sign of my lower rank, and would be shorn off in the unlikely event that I actually passed that VR simulation.

Bolt Action knocked, and the pneumatic door hissed and dropped into the floor seamlessly. “Do come in,” the Overmare’s voice said pleasantly. Bolt Action threw me a worried look, which upset the butterflies that had suddenly gathered in my intestines. We both took deep breaths, and stepped into the office together.

The Overmare-General’s office was circular and pristine. In the back stood a large computer terminal built into the wall, which sported a portrait of a normal white-and-blue guardspony in purple archaic parade armor. “Captain Shining Armor,” read an engraved brass tag screwed into the frame. Next to it were smaller photographs of each Overmare-General, or Overstallion-General that had served as leaders of our stable. There were eight so far, with a printed name underneath each.

The eighth portrait matched the mare sitting in her ergonomic office chair. Her hooves were raised as if praying, but any thought towards piety was belied by the furrowed brow and unblinking stare of her yellow, eagle-like eyes. I had never seen an eagle, but I had once tried an ill-fated staring contest with a picture of one. My odds of winning a staring contest with Overmare-General Orders were equally bad.

General Orders did not offer us a seat, and even if she had, there were no chairs to sit on. Instead, Bolt Action and I simply stood at attention, though I was still favoring my left foreleg a bit.

“I would like to congratulate the two of you on a job well done, my ponies!” the Overmare began. Her voice was sweet, but her body language was tense and stern, setting off mental warning sirens.

We looked at each other incredulously. “Ma’am?” Bolt Action began, but the Overmare cut her off.

“My son was definitely acting out of line! You presented a fine example of the courage and fortitude we expect from everypony here in Stable Seven!” General Orders sported a wide smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “And you – Stable Chaplain-in-training, right? – You were so devoted to your duty and the laws of our stable that you refused to fight one of your peers! Such devotion and loyalty to the Stable are to be commended!”

That description of our actions, or at least mine, had more spin than the flywheel of a steam engine. Neither of us knew what to make of her words, so we both stood still in stunned silence, allowing General Orders to continue. She opened a drawer of her desk and pulled out a mostly blank piece of paper, one I had signed less than an hour ago. “I see you two ponies are the only ones brave and courageous enough, besides my son, to apply for the honorable distinction of our extended scouting mission.”

A protest began to rise to my lips, but she silenced me with a wave of her hoof. “Now I understand that one of you,” she read the name, “Silver Tongue, have not passed your Power Armor Proficiency exam, and normally that would disqualify you from service outside. But in light of your unwavering loyalty, I will make an exception. Rest assured, if you complete this mission, I will personally clear your Power training!”

That didn’t sit well with me, though I had a hard time putting my hoof on why. I didn’t have time to think about it, as the Overmare-General continued apace, turning to Bolt Action. “Your test scores are the best in your class, so I know you are a serious student. I recognize that a mission like this would detract from your studies, but consider that when you succeed, and I know you will, you will receive your commission!”

I blinked. That was skipping six years of education that Bolt Action had yet to do. What exactly was entailed by this ‘extended scouting mission?’ Darn it Bolt Action, what did you make me sign up for? “Um,” Bolt Action offered helpfully.

I put a hoof forward. “So what, exactly, is this mission?”

The Overmare-General smiled again, in the same manner as before. “Possibly the most vital mission to the entire stable!” She examined her forehoof carefully, as if inspecting it as if planning for a hooficure. “Our scouts have picked up some infrequent, distant radio transmissions from someponies calling themselves the Steel Rangers. As you may recall from your history lessons, these ponies were the pioneers of the same kinds of Power Armor that we here in Stable Seven use, and are bastions of civilization and discipline much like ourselves.”

How could I forget? Half the posters down here were pro-Ranger. General Orders continued, “Your mission will be to locate and earn the favor of these ponies, and negotiate a deal whereby we may join together.”

Well. That was marvelously straightforward. Go out, talk, come back, awards. I was up for a long walk if it meant this kind of reward! Besides, I was still feeling ashamed of my weakness in that ‘fight’ with Mobilization. Something like this would be a chance to prove myself. The Overmare looked at us expectantly. Bolt Action still seemed stunned, so I stepped forward again. “Yes, of course Ma’am. If that is what the Stable needs of us, of course we will.”

“Fantastic,” she said in that saccharine tone of voice, “Let us put your hoof on the forms, and then we’ll be ready for your departure.” General Orders gave us both a pair of carbon pages, and I began reading. There was our provided gear and rations, all standard for a scouting mission, and a detailing of the only mission objective, making contact with and allying if possible with the ‘Steel Rangers.’ Below these were detailed listings promising both of us pretty much exactly what General Orders had offered. I looked closely for fine print, and didn’t find any.

I took a quill from the Overmare’s desk in my magical grip and inked my name in the lines at the bottom, then passed it to Bolt Action. She was a little more hesitant than I, but then she too signed hers. Orders took both pages up in her magic and separated them, passing us the receipt copies. Huh. I had half expected some funny business from her, I was definitely getting that vibe, but she had yet to show a hint of her true colors. Her lips pursed into an unreadable little smile. She pulled open a file and stored the papers away with dozens of other, similar pieces of paper in her filing cabinet. Most had probably never been touched after being placed there.

She turned around to the large computer terminal dominating the room, and muttered something that sounded like a string of numbers. I couldn’t quite make them out. Then she cleared her throat, and said in a much more audible tone, “Stock, please bring standard ready gear to the stable entrance room, please.” She pressed a button on the console, and the entire desk lifted up and out of the floor. Pistons two hooves across supported it. In the gap in the floor left by the desk were several regimented concrete steps leading down into a steel hallway lit internally in rainbow colors. I cocked an eyebrow. That was the most impressive secret passageway I’d ever seen. Or read about, I’d never seen any before. Stable Seven wasn’t big on secrets, or so we’d been told.

The Overmare- General beckoned with a hoof and began walking down through the stairs. I followed, and a still-silent Bolt Action tailed behind me.

For a secret access tunnel, this one was really well-lit. Hundreds of glowing multi-colored little spheres lined thin shelves along the entire hallway, casting us in their diffuse glow. Squinting through all the light, I could make out small names underneath each one, followed by two sets of times and dates connected by a hyphen.  I wondered what they were. Unfortunately, I actually didn’t make any progress towards either that riddle or the Overmare herself before we exited the entrance and were confronted with that same large security stallion who arrested us. He was holding a set of saddlebags in his fuchsia magical grip.

“Now?” I asked, suddenly uncertain.

“Yes, of course.” General Orders dismissively waved a hoof, “This mission should be fulfilled with utmost urgency.” There was no urgency in her voice.

“But what about Chaplain Cross? Or Bolt Action’s parents? We have duties here, who will do them?”

“Taken care of.” She started tapping away at a freestanding console. I could see the massive iron door and a large steel battering ram-shaped object hung from the ceiling in front of it. Looking at it, I guessed that it was some sort of hydraulic opening mechanism. I wondered if it was magnetic or if there was some turn-and-lock feature that I couldn’t discern from here. I had a sinking realization that I would get to see exactly how it worked in all too much detail. The belt of some saddlebags wrapped itself roughly around my chest. It was about three smidgameters too tight.

Bolt Action sat, still mute and bewildered, as the head of security placed the armor’s helmet over her head and locked it in place. He fiddled with it, probably just making sure the systems initialized.

I had a bad feeling about this. The Overmare pushed a lever up with finality. Steam began to hiss and whistle as a series of hydraulic systems began to initialize above us. My ears lay flat against my head as I watched the movement in the ceiling. Steel cables whirred and pulled together in time with my intestines. No, this was a bad idea. A really bad plan. I couldn’t put my hoof on why. I wanted to run off back to my quarters, where I would have been if Bolt Action hadn’t made me sign up on that stupid sheet. What was I thinking? I didn’t want to go Outside! I wanted to stay in my room and get toasty under some blankets! Were there even blankets in scouting gear? I looked around, and saw that there was a bedroll.

Not at all the same. “Ah, if at all possible, I suddenly remembered I uh…left something on. Or something. I probably better go take care of that before I go. Just give me an hour or so! Bye!” I headed for the exit, and suddenly realized that the secret tunnel had closed into…somewhere. There was another door, right? I spun around in a circle, looking for a more normal exit, but I couldn’t discern one among the unmarked steel and rock walls and unfamiliar machinery. The Battering ram swung forward with the hum of a massive electromagnet and a resounding ‘clunk.’ The Overmare gave me a nonplussed look. The giant door squealed as it began to slide away from the Outside and in towards the stable. I did the same thing. Well, I almost squealed, but I was definitely sliding away. Lavender magic caught my Pipbuck and saddlebags, carrying me along with them. I marveled for a second at his magical strength, since normally ponies can’t just lift another pony like that, but then I noticed the velocity and direction I was flying in. Bright yellow light filtered in through the opening as the gear turned on its massive tracks, and I flew through that opening fast enough to see both sides of the gear before it had finished turning.

The Overmare pushed a still-stunned pony shaped piece of armor that contained Bolt Action after me. No, no, no! My insanely slow mind cast about for some valid reason to stay, my mouth blurting them out as quickly as they came to mind. I-I needed to use the bathroom! Yes! No! Come on brain, name, give me something to work with. Wait! Sending us is dangerous to the stable! We could reveal vital information. Finally having a good excuse for perhaps a couple more seconds, I readied it to shout as the clanging and screeching of the thirteen ton metal gear rendered all speech inaudible.

A final clang and I just sat there, staring at the number “7” inscribed inside a circle on the center of the immovable door. A small, mostly destroyed console stood next to the door. I contemplated trying to knock loudly, but the century old skeletons that had died with cracks in their hooves presumably from doing exactly that was a firm dissuader. 

I turned to the power armored number one cadet next to me. She had been silent the entire time this travesty had taken place seemingly in a daze. As I watched her, she began to shake, so violently that you could see it through the three inches of steel covering her body.

We were trapped. Outside. Alone. I flipped through my Pipbuck radio channels, seeing a few pop up that I didn’t recognize. I was fixated on the only one that mattered: the Stable Seven PA broadcast system.  My radio still could pick it up! That shouldn’t be possible, since the door and walls were designed to block any radiation, including radio waves. I guessed it must be coming through the broken down console that was next to us. I clicked it on, and Overmare-General Orders’ voice began resonating throughout the short cave we were in.

“…remind you that all traitors to the stable are to be dealt with immediately and harshly. Their positions will be filled shortly by the next most qualified individuals…” I clicked it off. Traitors, she said!

The unfairness, the finality, the absurdness of it all combined together and hit me like a vault door.

I began to shake, too.























Footnote: Level 1.  
New Perk (Companion): Bastion - You are (thankfully) a victim of Bolt Action’s protective nature. +3 DT
Starting Trait: Good Neightured - +5 to speech, medicine, repair, barter, but -5 to Energy Weapons, Explosives, Guns, Melee, Unarmed



> Chapter 2
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 2
 
Survival

“I despise camping. All that ...euugh... nature!”

We just lay there, in the ashes and bones of ponies a hundred and twenty years dead. I wasn’t really sure what to do. I had just been thrown out, literally, of my stable, for following the rules and not fighting, while Bolt Action had been thrown out of the stable for standing up and fighting on my behalf, in the spirit of the rules of the stable.
 
We weren’t troublemakers. Bolt Action was a model guardsmare, and I had had never gotten more than a raised voice at my passively deviant attitude. My fighting scores aside, we had the best grades of anypony in our year in Stable Seven. The only explanation was that the Overmare-General had something going on, though I had no idea what it could be. Whatever it was, I had sure stepped in it, and worse, I had taken Bolt Action with me. I still wasn’t sure exactly just what went wrong.
 
Bolt Action sat up first, and looked at me. Or at least, she turned her head in my direction, I couldn’t make out her eyes behind that helmet. “What do we do now, Silver?” Even through the slightly tinny effect the helmet gave her voice, I could tell that she had been crying.
 
“Why are you asking me? I don’t know what I’m doing! I’m the pony that got both of us stuck out here!” I chastised myself silently. If only we had been able to figure out the Overmare’s real intentions in time! If there had been a little longer for me to look around, maybe I could have used it as leverage to get back in. Turning towards the cave exit, I said, “Actually, scratch that. We’re going to get back in. We have a deal, and signed copies of it. We fulfill our side, and then she’ll have to let us back in.” You know, presuming the Overmare is good for her word.  
 
Better yet, if this Steel Ranger group really was a bunch of power-armored ponies like Stable Seven, then we would come back with an army capable of blowing open the door, and expose General Orders somehow. I wasn’t sure about how to accomplish that part, but I’m sure it would come to me with an army at my back.
 
Actually, that was a terrible plan. “I like it,” said Bolt Action.
 
Okay, unless she was entertaining the same revenge fantasy scenario as I was, Bolt Action ought to be disagreeing with me. “You do?”
 
“Yeah. We have a mission to do, for the good of the Stable. We should at least attempt to actually do it.”
 
Oh yeah, that. Actually, come to think of it, attacking Stable Seven was a bad plan. But the original mission was a good one. If we played our cards right, we could get back into the stable, without having to blow up any doors. We could just knock politely and get her to do it herself. “Alright, well, if we’re doing it, we’d better get on it. Sitting here isn’t going to help anything. Let’s see what goodies we got from General Orders.”
 
I took both my and Bolt Action’s saddlebags in my telekinetic grip and unceremoniously dumped their pre-packed contents on a relatively bone-free area of the cave.
 
We each had been given a weapon with minimal ammunition, true to the terms of our contracts. Bolt Action had a .308 rifle, in moderate condition. It had that funny no-grip design for weapons intended explicitly to work with a power armor gun mount. I, in contrast had a barely working nine millimeter pistol, of a basic earth-pony mouth-held design. Hopefully, I wouldn’t need it. Even if I was striking out on my persuasive talents today, I was sure that I would be able to at least run away from any confrontation we had Outside. We also had some health potions and two weeks’ worth of replicated food and water, and a general magical antidote apiece. Add my amazing arsenal of a whopping three combat spells – a directional shield, a generic water-drying spell, and basic combat levitation – all of which I had never been able to perform in anything remotely resembling combat – and we were pretty well screwed.
 
I put each item back into the bag, my Pipbuck noting each one separately. The pistol I packed deep in the bag. I really hoped I wouldn’t need it. Naturally, with the extra strength her power armor bestowed on her, Bolt Action carried the greater share of our gear. I copied the inventory data to Bolt Action’s Pipbuck, and got up to leave this cavern and its giant steel gear behind.
 
My hoof struck a hollow sound on my first step. A wooden sign had fallen on its face and gotten hidden in the sandy dust that covered the floor. I turned it over. “Fuck you, Overmare!” was written on it in large, angry irregular brownish letters.
 
Well, it was a bit crass, but it was an otherwise accurate statement. I nudged the sign so that it stood up against some rocks. If anypony else came out of the stable, this would be the first thing they saw.
 
Picking our way through the angry detritus of long-dead ponies, we finally made it to a loosely constructed wooden slat through which light was streaming. I could hear a howling, whistling sound Outside. I gave a last look back at the grey stable door, and then on the equally grey armor of my fellow exile-ee. Fuck You, Overmare. Very accurate.
 
I muttered a prayer to the Goddess, and pushed open the wooden slats.
 
Instantly it disappeared. No, it was ripped away from my hoof, torn away by some massive invisible force. Was this wind? It was similar to the wind in the simulator, but this breeze was to that breeze what the massive stable door was to the wooden slat that had clattered to Goddess knows where. I squinted into the wind, only able to see a higher, larger rock ceiling. This whole Outside thing was going to be much harder than I had previously realized.
 
So far, the Outside wasn’t much different from a stable. Cautious of the force, I slowly poked my head out of the narrow cave entrance. Instantly I was tossed against the side of the opening, probably earning a few bruises. I opened my eyes a little, squinting in the sheer volume of air being blown past me. I couldn’t see anything other than rocks in the darkness.
 
“What’s taking so long, Silver? You okay?” Bolt Action’s cold steel nudged my flank in concern. The touch was cold enough to make me jump… right out into the wind. I hugged the ground, keeping a low profile against it, but the pressure was strong enough that I felt that if I stood any higher, I would fly off.
 
“Yow! Watch it!” I tried to shout, but the air force shoved itself down my throat when I opened my mouth, and there was so much noise against my ears that I couldn’t hear myself. She poked her iron-clad head through the gap. I couldn’t shout a warning.
 
Apparently Bolt Action didn’t need one. The only part of her affected was a little ruffling in the bit of her mane that poked out the crest of the power armor. She calmly walked out, the heavy armor keeping her from being tossed about as lightly as I was. I would have glared at her if I wasn’t too busy squinting. She walked over to where I was holding on for the sake of my dear white pony hide. “Want help?” she offered, her voice barely audible in the wind.
 
Yes, I could use some help. But then the idea of being saved by Bolt Action twice in one day made me balk, and I shook my head. I could do this myself.
 
Of course, the easy way out would have been to just go with the force, and find out where the wooden slat wound up. I, however, was curious to see what caused wind this strong. Was there a giant fan at the end of this giant rocky ventilation shaft? I hunkered down and began to crawl, hoof by hoof, through the larger rocks lining the bottom of the cavern.
 
Ahead of me was a massive bright light. I walked out into it, my eyes hurting with the brightness. The wind rapidly decreased its strength as I moved further and further outside the cavern and into the light. Where was the fan? Did the cavern magically turn this light airy breath to its demonic fury? Perhaps it was natural for caves like this to have strong wind. Outside was weird.
 
Eventually, my eyes began to adjust to the bright light, and I looked across into the largest room I had ever seen. Was this the great outdoors? It was different than I had expected. For one thing, there was no big blue sky. That was disappointing. Between myself and the sky was a grey barrier of clouds. Maybe it would rain soon?
 
The stable atrium had nothing on this place. The clouds were so high that I couldn’t touch them, or hit them with a thrown piece of rock, or even with a magically levitated rock. I know, I tried. The second rock went up until I could no longer see it or the blue aura that enveloped it. I looked down, needing a bigger rock that I could see farther away. Distance this vast was mind-boggling.
 
“Ow!” I yelped. The pebble I had levitated had come back with a vengeance. Okay, no bigger rock. That ceiling distance would have to remain a mystery.
 
“Huh, I thought we’d see blue by now.” Bolt action idly mused.
 
I looked around at ground level instead. We appeared to be in some sort of ravine, if I remembered my books correctly. A river ran down the center of the canyon, but it flowed slowly, choked with silt and slime. Some small, hardy looking bushes grew up on any even slightly flat land. Further up, I could see some thick thorny areas.
 
Another pebble struck my head. “Ow! What?” I turned to Bolt Action.
 
“I didn’t do anything.” I believed her, but where else would a thrown pebble have come from? Another struck me in the shoulder. Oooh, it stung! But that definitely couldn’t have been Bolt Action.
 
I turned around, only to come face-to-face with what might be the ugliest creature in the Goddess’ creation. It looked like the pictures I had seen of a fly. Four veinous wings produced a low buzz, and its hoof-sized, bloated, bulbous body seemed covered with cancerous growths. Its body grew convex towards me, and then shot forward a little, releasing a small pebble sized something from its insectoid maw, which promptly struck me with the same force as the previous two blows. What the heck was it? I had never seen it in any of my books.
 
The areas where it had struck me burned and itched and still hurt. I ducked as I saw it cock back and fire again. I rolled over and strained to look at my shoulder. It was bleeding, yes, but worse, there was some sort of pulsing, bulbous needle where it had struck. I watched in horror for a second, and then panicked as it began to move –on its own! – worming its way inside my flesh. I didn’t give it two seconds before I telekinetically wrapped it in blue and threw it away from me. I didn’t want to play host to any larvae of any bug, much less whatever that thing was.
 
Speaking of which, the insect had cocked again, ready to fire a third larva-needle or whatever into my warm flesh. I prepared to dodge the other way, when Bolt Action jumped in between us. The flying monstrosity fired anyway, but instead of lodging in Bolt Action’s hide, the larva-dart ricocheted off her armor and landed coiled on a heap on the ground. Without a second thought she crushed it under an ironclad hoof. “Hey, ugly! Try a challenge!”
 
The creature gave a hissing, squeaky purr and began to follow her. This didn’t seem like the kind of insect you could squash just by slapping it. It was larger than my hoof! I needed a weapon. I had a weapon! I began to root through my saddlebags. Why had I buried my gun so deeply? And why did the back of my head hurt?
 
Finally, I found the pistol. I loaded a magazine and levitated it up to my mouth to start firing. Miss! Miss! Buck, this thing was hard to hit, with its erratic movement. Absolutely nothing like practicing at the range. I fired bullet after bullet in its general direction, as it continued to fire harmlessly at Bolt Action. Eventually, I got lucky and clipped one of the creature’s wings. It dropped like a rock, and it’s helpless bloated body was easily crushed by Bolt Action. “Take that, you overgrown fly!” she said, and then looked up at me. I couldn’t see her expression, but her body stiffened in alarm. “Silver! It’s stuck in your head!”
 
So that’s what the pain in the back of my head was. Wait a second. “Aah! It’s eating my brain! Get it off, get it off!” I couldn’t remove something I couldn’t see to levitate or reach to pull out! Bolt Action put her hooves to her helmet so that she could, presumably, take it off and use her mouth.
 
“I can’t take off the helmet! It’s stuck! Stock must have locked it on!” That was possible? But there was a more pressing concern here.
 
“Doesn’t matter! Use your hooves!” Without hesitation, Bolt Action ran over and put her forehooves on the back of my head. They came down on the back of my skull like a frying pan, the weight of her body forcing me down until my face rubbed in the sandy grit that was the floor of this oversize room. Then they pinched together and pulled. I felt a good three inches of straw-like proboscis pull out of my head, and then the weight lifted. I turned my head around and saw the creature wriggle and writhe, and then before my eyes its shell hardened and its body expanded, becoming another monstrosity. Unfortunately for it, it was also in between Bolt Action’s metal hooves, and it was immediately crushed between them.
 
I looked down, my wounds bleeding rivers of uncongealed blood down my otherwise white coat. The blood didn’t show any sign of stopping soon. It ought to be coagulating. Well, whatever the larvae secreted that was affecting me, the Pipbuck didn’t read it as poison, so I figured a healing potion would do the job. Maybe half. we only had six between us, so I needed to be conservative with my use of these. Especially if we were to run into any more of those monsters. 
 
Bolt Action kept on looking at me, presumably staring at the wound in the back of my head. It felt actually okay, now that I had had half a healing potion. I mean, I did feel a little lightheaded, but that was probably blood loss. I took out a bottle of clean stable water and took a swig, to replace lost fluids. I touched a hoof to the back of my head, feeling tender new skin formed where the wound had been. Still she kept on staring. The opaque dark glass on the helmet was kind of unnerving. “It can’t be that bad, can it? I mean, it only tried to eat my brain!” I grinned a little, hopefully my attempt at humor would get her to stop staring.  
 
“Poor critter. It could have starved to death doing dangerous stuff like that.” Well, that was better. I forced a soft chuckle, and Bolt Action shook her head.
 
“Well, let’s put in a data entry for this monstrosity. I’m thinking Evil Mutant Bug-eyed Flying Harbinger of Doom, myself.”
 
One very useful feature of Pipbucks was their data collection abilities. A Pipbuck could read an item, and once a pony had assigned it a name, they just had to get connected to a Stable-Tec hub, and the item would be identified for anypony else with a Pipbuck. It wasn’t a feature with much use in a stable, where the only new items likely to be created were kid’s craft projects and the like. But this was a new animal, and that meant I got to put in the data entry for it. I pulled up my Pipboy and held it close to the smooshed corpse of the spiny evil bug. “Bloatsprite,” it read simply. Well, that was disappointing. It also said that the Bloatsprite had an item in its possession, “Bloatsprite meat,”
 
I looked down at the greenish mess of slime, spines, and larvae. Meat? I hoped I would never be that desperate. I mean, I know ponies are omnivores, or else we wouldn’t be able to eat egg products like pies and cakes. But still. Eeugh.
 
“Silver…” said Bolt Action’s voice behind me.
 
I turned around to face her. Goddess, those glassy eye slits were disturbing. But instead of continuing, she just shook her head. Fine, don’t say anything. I hated not being able to see the expression on her face.
 
“We’d probably better be moving on.” I looked up at the high rock walls to either side. The canyon stretched for several more miles than I could see, but there was a bridge spanning the gap. Covering practically every square hoof of sandy dirt were scraggly, evil looking thorny brambles. There was a sort of path leading up to the bridge rising out of the tangled mess, clinging to the right side. The cliff had strange vertical craters along it, some coinciding with the path, and each corresponding to a matching deep hole in the left side. “Let’s try to get up to the bridge. Maybe we can find other ponies from the vantage point.”
Bolt Action shook her metal covered head. “See all the red marks in the left wall? I don’t want to go any closer to any more red marks today.”
 
“What red marks?” I asked simply.
 
“Y’know, on your EFS?”
 
“My what?”
 
Bolt Action cocked her head at what I took to be an incredulous angle. “Eyes-Forward Sparkle? Haven’t you been using it? Don’t tell me you forgot about SATS, too!”
 
To be honest, I had forgotten about SATS again. I had never needed my EFS since basic training, and so I had forgotten about that, too.
 
Yet another of the many features of a Pipbuck, besides their durability, information networking, and massive storage space is their ability to magically display a number of useful statistics directly into a pony’s brain, as if it were hovering on a screen in front of your eyes. I flicked mine on, and suddenly a wealth of information was made available to me. Well, some information, anyway. A horizontal compass told me that I was headed north-northeast, and there were a lot of red marks on left, west, wall.
 
Red marks were bad, if I remembered Pipbuck training. Supposedly the spell matrix of the Pipbuck could do a little divination magic, or something, and tell you whether or not a living creature wanted to kill you. It would then display red for ‘yes’ and blue for ‘no.’ On the other hand, it couldn’t tell you the distance between you and those marks, or their elevation. I didn’t think anypony really understood how that feature worked. My compass had exactly one blue bar, which hugged Bolt Action’s location.
 
This Pipbuck could be really useful here in the Outside. I wondered if it had any other useful information that it could dig out of its spell matrix. I flipped through a few pages. I noted, to minor embarrassment, that I hadn’t turned off my audio recorder since turning it on halfway through my ‘fight’ with Mobilization. Oops. I cut the recording, and the Pipbuck told me it had been a whole whopping four hours since I had started the audio recording, when this whole fiasco had started. Only four hours? It felt like longer.
 
The Pipbuck had also been quietly revealing a topographical map of our surroundings. There were three square markers on the map, and two triangular ones, representing the locations of Bolt Action’s and my Pipbucks. One square had a symbol of a Stable-Tec gear, and read “Stable 7,” A marker corresponding roughly with the west side of the bridge was labeled “Renegade Shack” with a chevron over it. The square that corresponded to our current location read “Ghastly Gorge.”
 
I looked up at the cliffs, the thorny plants, and then back at the bloatsprite corpse. Ghastly was one word for it.
 

+ + +

 
The thorny bushes hadn’t given us much trouble, after I asked Bolt Action to walk in front. It didn’t matter if there were thorns as long as my foreleg, no evil plant thing was going to be capable of punching through magically reinforced, self-repairing steel. With the extra four inches of height granted by the armor, Bolt Action was even slightly larger than me, meaning she left a comfortable, pony-sized hole through which I had no trouble walking.
 
Rising out of the brambles, though, we were much closer to the red bars on the EFS. Even this close, I couldn’t see all the way inside the curious cave formations on the west cliffs. I edged into one of the Cliffside depressions, looking directly into one of the caves. There was a red bar in it, but I couldn’t see what the red bar could be. Peering inside the cave, I turned on my Pipbuck light (another useful feature) and shone it down the cavern.
 
I only caught a glimpse of speeding red flesh before I jumped back out of the range of the crater I had been standing in, and not a moment too soon!
 
A head larger than me, followed by a boxcar-sized body lunged out with devastating swiftness, not stopping until its blunt nose struck the rock wall right where I had been standing a moment before. A yellow beady eye took note of my position, and the creature recoiled back into the cave as quickly as it had come. “What was that?” I shouted, nerves on end.
 
“I dunno! SATS says it’s something called a ‘Quarry Eel,’ but it doesn’t give me anything else.”
 
Oh yeah, SATS. I was pretty bad at this remembering business. “Okay, I’m going to see if that thing pops out again. Pull me back if it does.” I again stuck my head out into the crater, ignoring whatever Bolt Action had just started to say, and as soon as I saw that rushing corridor of red death, I flexed my temple and entered SATS.
 
Well, brilliant. Now I could see my demise coming in much more detail. SATS could speed up my perception and thinking speed so much that time seemed to slow nearly to a standstill, but my muscles remained just as slow as they ever were. Worse, in the temporal distortion of SATS, I noted that the ‘Quarry Eel’ was adjusting its aim so that if I dodged again like I did before, I would be Eel Chow. Its mouth opened, revealing long, backwards-pointing teeth above and below. I began to jump, in painfully slow motion, forward, away from my companion and away from the eel’s corrected aim.
 
Purple muscles in its throat flexed and revealed a second set of jaws within its armor plated mouth, ready to grab me and pull me inside its maw. Then SATS’s spell ran out of power, restoring time to normal speed while the spell recharged. The whole beast sped up to a blur, impacting the rock where I would have been if I had made the same dodge as before. I tumbled into the pulverized crater that had once been a path. 
 
“Silver, what the hell do you think you’re doing?” cried Bolt Action, “I can’t grip or pull things with this helmet on!” She jumped to me, letting loose a shot from the .308 into the quarry eel’s tunnel, and I covered my head instinctively as its massive head impacted right next to us. She fired again before the creature could retract into its cave, but the bullet just ricocheted off its thick hide. “My rifle can’t damage it, either.”
 
My mind recoiled against a creature this impossible. “How do those things get enough food to stay alive?” I wondered aloud. The anatomy of a quarry eel was probably fascinating, presuming anypony had managed to get one in a position to actually study it.
 
“I don’t care, as long as the diet remains solidly ‘not us.’ Equestria to Silver, let’s pay attention to our imminent doom here!”
 
“Right, giant toothy things shoot out of the holes in the west cliffs and impact with the east cliff, which we have to travel because it’s the only path up to that bridge. I’m guessing these things have been around here a while because they’ve hit the rock enough times to leave marks. Either that or the rocks are just weak.” I hoped this plan would work. It was simple, maybe too simple, but I didn’t have a better one. “There’s nothing for it, we have to charge ahead and jump across whenever we start to cross one of the craters. Hopefully these things aren’t paying close attention, and we can get a little more time before the first strike.”
 
As I said that last sentence, yellow globes and evil jutting jaws began to poke out of the west cliff face. “Actually, scratch that last bit, the gunshot probably woke them up. We’d better start running!” I took off, traveling up the narrow path. Looking ahead, I could see a half dozen collapsed sections of path, where quarry eel impacts had destroyed it.
 
Bolt Action, in slightly better condition than me and wearing speed-enhancing power armor pulled ahead.
That bothered me slightly, but then I realized it could work to my advantage, if I could start my jump when the eel retracted, then I would have slightly more time to make my jump. It was a little selfish of me, I know, but I wasn’t the athlete in magic armor.
 
We rushed ahead, as some of the surrounding quarry eel heads halfheartedly lunged in our general direction, although they were too far away to get us. I hoped. A pair of lazy bloatsprites entered into my EFS, before a quarry eel head lunged out and swallowed them. Great, these beasts ate creatures like that for breakfast. That really didn’t help our chances.
 
Presently, we met the first section of collapsed path. Bolt Action nimbly leapt across, without hesitating. I started to skid to a halt as the train-sized eel smashed into its crater, missing her, but noting me. Its muscles flexed, and it began to pull away, and I ran full tilt and jumped.
 
I made it! Hah! It worked! My plan worked! I could have danced, if the head hadn’t hit its mark a second time. Bolt Action had waited for me to cross before moving on, but we began to race forward again, and this time I made sure to keep just enough distance between us that I wouldn’t have to stop and start again. We dodged another two the same way, each time our actions getting a little smoother, like Stable-Tec craftsmanship.
 
Wait a minute, this was too easy. I looked ahead, past Bolt Action and saw that the next two gaps were close together, with just enough space between them for one pony. And that meant – “Wait, Bolt Action, stop!”
 
It’s a good thing Bolt Action was a better listener than me, because she simply froze as soon as I called out to her, metal hindquarters skidding to a halt along the ground as not one, but two quarry eels lunged out, the first one like normal, and the second one poised to get somepony like me who had been smart enough to evade the other heads. They retracted, and we both jumped ahead one space, the two heads snapping after me so closely that I had to turn a quarter to the left to avoid meeting the same fate as those bloatsprites.
 
I jumped again before they could broadside me again, landing on my dock again. It still hurt from jumping down that staircase all those hours ago. I winced from the pain. Healing potions didn’t care about bruises. “You alright?” asked Bolt Action.
 
I nodded. “You?”
 
She turned around and began running ahead again. I leapt to my hooves and ran after her. I didn’t want to be late in the jump timing! She jumped across the final gap, and I prepared to do the same, when the resident quarry eel jumped leapt out and actually struck her. Bolt Action let out a soft little grunt and was pulled back into the cave along with the creature, and I almost missed my jump in shock. Almost.
 
Safely across, half my brain told me that the smart thing to do would be to just leave her. I didn’t have a weapon I could use on it, and besides, my aim sucked. She was probably dead already. Her memory would be remembered.
 
As that half of my brain went on rationalizing, the useful part searched frantically for a solution. “No, nonono, think-think-think,” I said aloud to nopony in particular. I ran a hoof through my mane, looking for a solution to my unable-to-hurt-a-quarry-eel problem. Well, my little peashooter was worthless, but was I a unicorn or what? A unicorn is never disarmed when he still has magic! I ran through my mental catalogue of spells. Evaporation? Weak shield? Lightning strike? That last one would be cool, if I was capable of actually doing it, but I didn’t have any aptitude with electricity spells. I glanced up at the collapsed area of path, and knew what I needed to do.
 
Oh, this was a terrible idea. I jumped back into the crater area and instantly triggered SATS. Now in slow motion, I could see the greedy beast again lunging, a still-alive Bolt Action using its incisors as grips to keep it from swallowing her with its second set of jaws. “Quarry Eel Watch Out Extra Fast” read its unique Pipbuck entry. Somepony presumably had run into this thing before. Yellow beady eyes fixed on my succulent non-armored pony hide, while I focused my magic and levitated out a few choice stones from the cliff face above me. The mountainside rumbled slowly, and as the narrow jaws closed over me, the cliff broke apart, leaving massive falling rocks which should be able to hurt the eel.
 
My plan also hadn’t left me a way out, which was a problem. More problematic was that the eel head was retracting back without showing any signs of being hit. I began to try to work out a way to cut our way out from inside, assuming we weren’t going to be chewed or pummeled in a gullet or something, but the mouth lurched and dropped, suddenly stopping again. The muscles relaxed, though the toothy grip the inner jaws had on Bolt Action’s hindlegs didn’t lessen. “Goddess-dammit, Silver, what did you do?”
 
I made no answer as I magically pried the teeth out of Bolt Action’s armor. They didn’t appear to have any poison, so that was good, although at least two of them had drawn blood. We then both pushed open the roof of its mouth, and climbed out onto the path. Its slack body hung out from cliff side to cliff side like a clothes drying line, large blocks of sandstone sitting in its cranium and eye sockets. Whew, that was lucky. If it had landed in a different spot, that boulder could easily have crushed us both, and only maimed the ‘Quarry Eel Watch Out Extra Fast.’
 
Wasting no time, Bolt Action kicked out the largest of its teeth, depositing them in her saddlebags, while I checked my Pipbuck’s map again. The bridge was only a hundred yards or so in front of us, but the marker for “Renegade’s Shack” was right on top of us. I lined up the chevron marker on my EFS and walked straight ahead, peering closely at the large rocks that were right where the shack should be. I looked up, and then down. The only thing remotely unusual was a solitary blue feather lodged under a stone. It looked ancient and sun-bleached, only hints of its former cerulean brilliance showed. Next to it was scratched a few letters into the hard rocks. I peered closer. “Turn on your radio, idiot,” they read.  
 
I opened my Pipbuck’s passive radio scanner. It had decoded three channels right now, “DJ,” “Enclave,” and “Stable Seven Outcasts Use This One.” Well, that was straightforward. I rolled my eyes and clicked it on. A stallion’s voice emerged from my pipbuck.
 
“—peats. This message is intended for ponies who have been exiled from Stable Seven like we were. Up on the path near the railway bridge is a small cave. We’ve tagged the location on your Pipbuck. More will be explained inside, but to reveal the cave, stand next to the feather-rock and say the name of your Goddess. Watch out for quarry eels along the path, especially the last one. We recommend following the river along the bottom, and then climbing the rock face, it’s easier and safer. Message repeats. This…”
 
I rolled my eyes again and facehoofed, wishing I had turned this on sooner. Somepony was being very helpful, and I hadn’t been paying attention enough to listen. At least the password was simple enough. “Faust.” I said, and what had appeared to be solid rock wavered and then disappeared, revealing a steel blast door, which opened. A small room, about the size of my living quarters in Stable Seven, lay beyond.
 
Bolt Action and I wandered in. The door slammed shut and florescent lights flickered to life above us. The room was a mess. It had once been jammed full of preserved food, weapons, ammunition, and even some power armor pieces, but all that remained was a number of empty packages, some locked ammunition crates, and some miscellaneous gun pieces. There were two worn sets of blue and yellow stable seven barding hung up near a wall mounted cot, and finally a Stable-tec terminal flickered to life on top of a cluttered table. 
 
At least nothing tried to kill us.
 
“About time we got a break today,” observed Bolt Action, “but what about the bridge? I thought you wanted to go up there.”
 
I shrugged. “We can go up there in the morning. This is probably the best place to spend the night anyway.” She nodded.
 
I made a beeline for the terminal, while Bolt Action settled in. Good old Stable-Tec engineering, built to last. The monitor came to life, logging in automatically. Well, that was nice. A number of entries came up, with a pony’s initials and then a date. There was one pre-war entry, a few wartime entries, and then two relatively recent ones. I downloaded them all to my Pipbuck, and began playing the most recent one first. It was probably left by whoever was being so helpful.
 
“This is Gol-uh, GH,” began a mare’s voice. “It’s been a long time since we found this place after being exiled from Stable Seven. We have discovered that we weren’t the first and, we expect, we won’t be the last. Hopefully we can provide some helpful tips to anypony who has been unfortunate enough to earn OG-O’s ire. We’ve refurnished this shack with some extra food, guns, and ammunition, feel free to take some, but remember that you aren’t the only ponies who might need this help. Take only what you need, and if you can, come back and replenish the supplies once you’ve gotten back on your hooves…”
 
I looked around at the old cans and shredded cardboard boxes of Apple Bombs. So much for GH’s hospitality. Somepony must have been here between GH and us, and didn’t share her helpful attitude. The message continued on, “…there are a few general tips that you should be aware of, first, as a little spritebot once told us, make some friends. The wasteland is hard enough without having to do it alone. Second, keep bottle caps. They’re like ration cards out here, except you can exchange them for whatever you want. Third, keep your guns in working order. Nopony manufactures new things any more, so you won’t be able to get new ones. And watch out for raiders and the local irradiated wildlife, especially killerflies. Avoid radiation and taint.
 
“CB and I are leaving with the Rangers for the Crystal Commonwealth, and likely won’t be back. The new password we put on the door should make it inaccessible to anyone who isn’t from Stable Seven, and the radio message won’t activate without an exile’s Pipbuck signal. Good luck, fellow exile.”
 
Make friends? Bottle caps are ration cards? Gun maintenance? I appreciated the gesture, but GH wasn’t providing a whole lot of useful tips.
 
“Silver, could you take a look at my helmet?” Bolt Action’s tinny voice echoed in the small bunker. “I think Stock did something with it. I couldn’t get it off before.” She sat on her haunches and put her hooves on her helmet, pushing at it.
 
I cantered over to her and peered at the joint where helmet fitted itself over the black mesh beneath. Normally, there were a series of four small clasps above and below that would pop open if a pony turned their head in just the right way, allowing them to unscrew the O-ring collar with ease. The clasps had opened, but the screw wouldn’t budge, not with hooves and not with telekinesis. “Well, it’s not coming off normally, but you knew that. Maybe there’s something wrong with the O-ring? I don’t see anything. I don’t suppose your onboard terminal could run a diagnostic.”
 
“Already did. It’s reading magical interference.”
 
According to Smoothbore, ‘magical interference’ was Stable-Tec for ‘unknown.’ That was unhelpful. I ran a few possibilities through my head. The best thing to do was to use a suite of magical identification spells, most of which I didn’t know by heart, find a restoration talisman (which used magic I didn’t know) to reset the armor back to an earlier state, or get a magically enhanced plasma cutter and brute force it. That was the worst idea, because not only did it require technology I didn’t have, but because it would also probably leave Bolt Action with a third degree burn mixed with slag in a perfect line around her neck. I had only one feasible option, but… “I dunno, Bolt Action. I could probably pull together a brute force magic diminishing spell to see what is locking it in place, but that would crash your whole system.” Doing something like that without a Pipbuck repairpony around could leave Bolt Action immobile for hours while her system rebooted itself. I wished that I had paid better attention on support-role day, when Click Clack’s father talked about his spell matrix repair work. Or, just as good, that I had a step by step power armor repair and troubleshooting guide, but I’d never even read one, and ‘standard scouting gear’ didn’t come with any books.
 
I tried various more physical methods for getting the o-ring to budge. This could take a while. “Silver,” Bolt action called again while I worked. “Silver, you killed something today.”
 
“Huh. I suppose I did. I hadn’t really thought about it.” The plate underlying the screw really seemed jammed, maybe I could move it and unstick the ring.
 
“Ha! I knew it! Lever Action owes me ten dessert cards!”
 
“Knew what?”
 
“That you could kill an animal. Lever Action wouldn’t let me invite you radroach hunting because she said you’d feel sorry for them and try to broker a peace between us.”

I snorted. “In my defense, it was trying to eat my brain.” I telekinetically grabbed a nearby piece of metal to use as a sort of shim, but to no avail. That thing was stuck on tight, whatever Stock had done. I didn’t even know it was possible to do that to a suit of armor. “I think it must have eaten the unstick-power-armor-joints part of my brain, Bolt Action, I can’t get it.”
 
“Oh. O-okay. We’d better get some rest, then.” Bolt Actions words were strong but choked, the choking not from the sabotaged O-ring.
 
I tried to think of something to say, but my namesake failed me yet again. Having the helmet stuck on would be an inconvenience to me or any other unicorn, but for an earth pony, mouths were vital to how they interacted with the world, and the Stable Seven power armor covered the whole front of Bolt Action’s face with a number of rubber hoses and metal plates. It would be like taking away my magic. I shuddered. Since I was incapable of saying anything helpful, I looked out at the door to the large room and its impossibly high ceiling. “Hey. Why don’t you take the co—,” I began, but Bolt Action cut me off.

“I’ll just break it with the armor on. I’ll take the floor.” So much for chivalry, but this at least left me comfortable. I settled on the blanket-less cot, shivering a little. Whoever had built the giant room sure liked it cold at night. 

Unlike that helmet, this problem had an easy fix. I floated the two old uniforms over and laid them on top. They smelled a little of mildew, sweat, and dust, but they were warm at least. “Goodnight, Bolt Action.”

She made no reply. Maybe she was already asleep?


> Chapter 3
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 3
 
Others
 
“Raiders can’t be reasoned or bargained with. And it ain’t no use surrendering, ‘cuz they’ll just shoot you anyway.”
 
 
The morning came without the familiar buzz of an alarm. Great, I had forgotten to set my pipbuck alarm again. I was probably late for my morning chores, and Chaplain Cross would grumble angrily in my direction. I rolled off my cot and onto the floor, stumbling over some heavy metal thing.
 
Wuh? Oh yeah. “Sorry about that, Bolt Action. Didn’t mean to wake you.”
 
A tin snore told me that I hadn’t.
 
I picked my way around her, and started to look for a place to relieve myself, but there didn’t seem to be any restrooms in the ‘Renegade’s Shack.’ Outside then.
 
I approached the door, intending to open it, but stopped at the muffled sound of voices from the other side. Other ponies! The prospect of meeting ponies from the surface was exciting, but I hesitated. What if it was the Overmare, or somepony else from Stable Seven here to execute the ‘traitor?’ I pressed my ear to the cold metal of the door.
 
“-lestia. Luna. Uh, the goddess? Fuck, are there any other ones? Princess Twilight, fuck, Princess Cadance? Fuckin’ pre-war shit tech.” A stallion’s annoyed voice came from the other side. Between my ears burning slightly from his poor vocabulary, and his not getting the answer right, I surmised that this stallion was not from Stable Seven. 
 
Then another voice, “C’mon Rip, get the damn door already! Bet there’s Stampede, or Buck, or Dash in there! Prob’ly a whole hoard of it, place this well hidden!” The terms were unfamiliar to me, except for Buck, a quick-acting steroid. I wasn’t a doctor-pony, and I almost never got sick, so if the other two were medicines as well, I wouldn’t know. But if these ponies were looking for medicine, then they probably weren’t that bad.
 
A third voice murmured something staccato and indistinct.
 
Then some light taps came from the thick steel door, probably pounding hooves. Then Rip’s voice shouted again, “Goddess-dammed piece of shit trash! Fucking open already! ‘Say the name of your goddess’ my ass! I bet there isn’t even a real place, just some shitty marker some asshole left!” They knew about markers? Then they had a pipbuck! Maybe they hailed from some other stable. If that was the case, then maybe they had some survival tips. I definitely wanted to meet them, at least, and get an idea of how well stables had rebuilt Equestria after the mega-spell apocalypse. “I bet it’s nothin’. Fuckin’ false marker. Let’s go.”
 
The timing was too good, I couldn’t resist. I opened the door, to see three ponies, two stallions and one very lean mare. They all wore some type of barding that seemed to be made primarily out of spikes and leather belts, but I didn’t get much of a look at them before they all jumped around to face me. I opened my mouth to wish them all good morning, but the words died when the larger of the two male ponies brought up a sawed-off shotgun and pressed its jagged muzzle against my temple with enough force to earn it a little trickle of blood. I blinked out of surprise. “Gimme all your shit,” he said. His voice, much clearer and nastier without four inches of steel and magical illusion between us, sounded like Rip’s, and was only slightly distorted by the presence of a weapon in his mouth.
 
The firearm brought me to attention quickly. I blinked again slowly, taking in the situation with much greater detail, even flexing my temple and entering SATS for a moment. All three ponies were clearly outlined in hostile red. I started with the pony with a gun pressed to my head. The sawed-off shotgun was in extremely poor repair, better suited to the recycler than a gun closet. Some of the disrepair was purposeful, like the removed safety and the splintered remains of the stock and mouthpiece were, rather than repaired, simply covered with a softer, slightly fuzzy, brightly colored grip, attached primarily with dried blood, as far as I could tell. Goddess, was that pony hide? Rip himself was built larger than me, and he was far more muscular, which showed through his belts-and-spikes outfit that really didn’t cover any vital areas, but both he and it were covered in grime, blood, and probably some other fluids to the point where it was hard to tell where his clothes ended and his hide began.
 
The other two ponies were similarly outfitted. The mare had, from the little I could see of it, a coat the color of tarnished silver that blended with her jaundiced eyes. Her mane, or scalp rather, had been scratched at so frequently and so vigorously that there were more scabs than hairs. Her forelegs were covered with red marks and scabs that looked like bite marks. Had she tried to eat herself?
 
The third pony looked like the smartest of the group, but that was probably the cracked dirty glasses and the pipbuck. I was more horrified and disconcerted by that pipbuck than the gun, because Glasses-stallion wasn’t wearing it properly, instead he was holding it between his forehooves on the ground. The reason for this odd and less-effective ability was the real problem, instead of bothering to remove a pipbuck with a key, he had simply sawed it off of some other unfortunate stable dweller, leaving the putrefied limb still in the cuff. It was that pipbuck’s map and radio they were listening to. I released SATS.
 
These were obviously not friendly ponies. I formed a quick half-plan to get rid of them.
 
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” I said, throwing a lazy eye over at Rip.
 
“The fuck shouldn’t I?” came the reply. Good, keep him talking. If he’s talking, then his tongue isn’t poised to pull the trigger.
 
“A number of reasons. First, this spot’s already been looted, and only I know where it’s buried.” I let that hang while I tried to think of more reasons, preferably true ones.
 
“Yeah, well maybe I don’t care so much for your stuff as much as for making you dead.”
 
“Rip, rip,” rasped the jaundiced mare, “I wan’ his face. I like it. ’s pretty.”
 
Rip seemed emboldened by her eccentric, unsettling comment. “You hear that? She wants your face. You’d better cough up quick. Boulder, go find what they’re hiding in there.”
 
Darn, that was one plan shot. Looking into Rip’s eyes, I could tell that if I had simply told him that we didn’t have anything, he would have shot me on the spot. Boulder, the glasses-and-pipbuck stallion, dropped the pipbuck and walked into the room, grumbling and cursing under his breath about having to do all the work. I for my part did my best to demonstrate an unflappability and confidence that I had never actually possessed, despite my mind working overtime to think of possible ways to diffuse the situation and get out unscathed.
 
“Rip! Rip, there’s somethin’ here!”
 
Rip’s attention had shifted to the yellow mare, who had begun biting at her legs, but he refocused. “I knew it. You’ve been holding out on me, Pretty-Face.” I guessed that was my new moniker. He then shouted past me, to Boulder, “What kinda shit did this asshole try to keep from us?”
 
“I‘unno. Looks like – it’s power armor!” Great, Boulder had found Bolt Action. I had hoped to keep her out of this.
 
“So that’s what you are, Pretty-Face? You one’a them Steel Rangers?” Before I decided on an appropriate response, he withdrew the shotgun and then savagely jammed it under my jaw. “I hate Rangers. And it must be my lucky day, I caught you with your pants down. Any last words?”
 
I guessed that it was Rip’s intention to cut off my last words with a well-timed round. Instead, I just laughed, in the process shaking the gun a little loose (Rip was taller than me, and the position was very difficult for him to maintain). “What’s so funny?” he demanded, unbalanced.
 
“And I thought Glasses – Boulder – was supposed to be the smart one!”
 
They simply stared for a moment, and so I went on, “That’s not my armor. It’s mare’s armor. And Earth-pony armor. That’s my partner, still asleep. And let me tell you, she is not a morning-pony! But I bet a round of that shotgun in this little room will be enough to wake up anypony, even though it’s too small of a weapon to do anything else to that armor. You wanna take your chances with one angry invulnerable mare, go ahead and shoot me.”
 
“You’re bluffing.  Boulder, why don’t you see if it fits on Sunshine.” Boulder kicked at the armor’s helmet, and jumped several hooves’ distances when it stirred.
 
“Mnuh. That you Silver?” she muttered, twisting a bit. Then she leapt to her hooves. “Silver!” 
 
“It’s alright, Ms. Action, I was just explaining to this gentleman here why it’s a much smarter idea to leave than to shoot me. Beneficial to all parties involved.”
 
Unfortunately, Rip wasn’t quite that easily intimidated. He tried to grapple me to get into a better position, but doing that trick again was just what I was expecting. As soon as he moved the gun again, I ducked, entered SATS and magically grabbed the shotgun in my telekinesis. I concentrated, putting all the small amount of force I could muster into jerking the shotgun out of his mouth. I ended SATS and thrust my head vertically upward, ending with the tip of my horn against the soft flesh where the taller pony’s head met neck. “Leave.” I growled.
 
It was a risky move, since unicorn horns, while incredibly sharp and durable, were also vulnerable. Taking any strong hit in the horn was worse than a shot to the groin. Worse, if it was shattered, it could potentially sever your connection to magic forever.
 
Rip’s eyes darted around, looking from me, to Bolt Action with her rifle trained on him, to his two companions. Sunshine, the jaundiced mare, didn’t seem to have taken any notice of us and seemed entirely consumed in trying to gnaw off her own forelegs. “Fuck. Fine.” I backed off, and the three ponies left. Rip tried to get his shotgun, but I telekinetically threw it off the ledge rather than give him the advantage again.
 
I watched the trio trod out of the canyon up to the bridge, and disappear to the east.
 
As soon as they were out of sight, I nearly collapsed as the façade of confidence broke down in a rush of relief. Nopony had had to die.
 
With the relief I felt came a laundry list of things my brain wanted to do. With the absence of mortal danger, I found that I still needed to relieve myself, and now I was hungry as well. I expediently took care of the first necessity, and then walked back into the safe house. Bolt Action had busied herself with the terminal. I half expected her to scold me, or give some sort of indication of her opinion on the morning’s little event, but that inscrutable face granted no such knowledge.
 
I looked under the fold-out cot that I had spent the night in, where I had stored my pack between Bolt Action and the wall, but was greeted with only empty air. “Bolt Action, did you move my pack?”
 
“No.” her voice was terse, annoyed. Maybe the terminal was being uncooperative.
 
I knew where I had placed my pack, and if Bolt Action hadn’t moved it, then it must have walked off of its own accord or something. After all, nopony else had been back here, except for… Boulder…. I face-hoofed.
 
“That rotten thief!”
 

+ + +

 
We set off again, now with decidedly fewer resources. Bolt Action had insisted that I take half her rations, though now we had only one weapon, hers. I had gone and levitated back up the shotgun that I had thrown away, but that hardly counted as a weapon. In Stable Seven, it would have been trash. Even though I had only one round of buckshot in it, it might be useful as a club. I’d have to fire it from telekinesis, though, since I didn’t trust it not to explode in my mouth. Besides, I didn’t have a particular fondness for the taste of blood, pony-flesh, or Rip’s saliva.
 
It was now mid-morning when we finally made it to the bridge that I had intended to reach yesterday afternoon. Finally reaching it, I was overwhelmed at the vastness of the equestrian landscape. I knew the Outside was supposed to be big, but this scale was more than I could properly comprehend. In every direction the ground stretched, mostly flat, sandy, and barren, with dead, petrified trees and bushes scattered across the landscape that didn’t do anything to break up the overall monotony. There were only four major breaks in the landscape. To the distant northwest was a forest which was still green, though it was a dark, sickly green, and looking at it churned my stomach as much as the thought of firing Rip’s shotgun in earth-pony fashion, but for a reason I couldn’t explain.
 
Some distant jagged shapes rose in the distance to the south. Mountains. Or were they hills? I wasn’t sure quite where the distinction was between the two. The only other feature that broke the horizon was a number of black compression steel towers, whose peaks vanished into the clouds before reaching their tops.
 
The most important landmark, however, was the wood tie railroad that reached the horizon in two instances, one west, towards the forest, and one trailing southeast, towards the mountains. Faced with this seemingly immeasurable vastness, I fell back on my haunches. How could I hope to find the hidden bunkers of Steel Rangers in this wasteland?
 
I only had a vague knowledge of the overall shape of prewar Equestria. Living in the stable it had never been important to know, and stable ponies don’t have a frame of reference to assign maps of the real world any more than the maps on the front inside covers of the Daring Do novels. This left the two of us blind in our choice of direction. Bolt Action wanted to stick to the railroad, because of a higher chance of finding civilization, if it existed. I wanted to go towards the east, after the thieves and my supplies. 
 
Before we chose a direction, however, a distant, cheerful polka erupted on from the west side of the Ghastly Gorge bridge. It was patriotic, but too playful to really rouse any feelings of national pride, not that I had any. The melody was familiar, one I had heard often in the Stable Seven, though Stable-Tec’s version was more solemn. Squinting towards the source of the music, I was horrified to see another bloatsprite, but worse: this one was covered in metal and lights.
 
Dear Celestia, a power-armored bloatsprite.
 
That settled the choice of direction rather quickly. Even if the EFS labeled it as non-hostile, I didn’t want to take any chances, especially with a one-shot club. We began heading eastward, along the railroad ties. In retrospect, it was an obvious compromise, but the spritebot certainly sped up our decision-making.
 
The rails were in near-pristine condition, though they did not look like they were regularly maintained or used. More likely, they were sealed with powerful prewar magic, which fused the entire rail into a single rigid piece and simultaneously made it nearly invulnerable and self-repairing, much like the enchantments on power armor. The wooden ties, on the other hoof, were soggy, rotted things that disintegrated if you stepped on them. We soon learned only to trot along the side of the rails, where the ground was more stable.
 
The terrain was more hilly and rocky than it had initially looked from a distance. No matter what, the railroad seemed to take the path of least resistance, and for the most part stayed situated between varying stony brown hills on either side.
 
We walked on until the sky began to darken. I glanced at the time on my pipbuck. One o’clock? I had expected my books to not be right about everything, but I didn’t think the days out here were so short. Perhaps, since Princesses Celestia and Luna were undoubtedly dead now (or else why would Celestia not have alerted her guards in Stable Seven?), the diurnal cycles had lost all regularity, throwing our sun and moon into chaotic flux?
 
It helped to think about such things while walking, taking my mind off the drudgery of just putting one hoof in front of the other, or the flies and other small, annoying but not particularly dangerous creatures.
 
I was awakened from my internal theorizing by the sound of gunfire further down the tracks. It sounded like there was only one firearm, and not my little pistol from before. “Somepony else is in trouble!” I said, and took off towards the sound of the shot.
 
“Wait! Silver!” Bolt Action called after me, but I couldn’t stop. If somepony was in trouble and I got there too late, I… I didn’t know. I rounded a bend in the railroad and saw the source of the trouble. A lone stallion was charging full steam over one of the nearby hills, turning around every couple steps without stopping so that he could fire a semi-automatic rifle. It wasn’t long before I saw what had him running for his life: a pack of giant pink butterflies crested the hill after him.
 
Butterflies? I thought they were supposed to be cute, small, and completely non-threatening! And insect wing power shouldn’t be able to work on that scale, or so I thought from my education, which continually seemed less complete. The EFS definitely assumed them hostile. As I watched, catching my breath and coming up with a plan, they caught up to the stallion and swarmed him.
 
Bolt Action caught up. “Silver—“
 
I cut her off, jumping ahead again. I called the plan over my shoulder, “I’ll distract them, you shoot it while I run. Try the wings!”
 
“Silver!” she shouted after me in alarm and anger, but this was an emergency! We’d address the problem later.
 
Wasting no time, I floated Rip’s trash shotgun to point-blank range of the butterflies, and fired at the wings of one. It didn’t tear up the insect’s wings nearly as much as I had hoped, and instead of just getting one or two of them as I had intended, the whole pack turned in an instant. “Oh, sho--,” I began, but better sense told me to forget the words and just run.
 
I had plenty of reason to expect this plan to work, I told myself as I ran. The stallion had been wasting time trying to shoot the butterflies, and was weighed down by his packs. Thanks to Rip and Boulder, I had no pack, and no weapon to distract me. I was also probably more fit than any random wasteland pony, judging by the ones I had already seen, due to proper diet and exercise as part of Stable Seven’s daily military regimen. While a wasteland pony could probably take a hit better than me, I could probably run farther and had fewer permanent injuries. I could do this!
 
At least, that is what I told myself during those agonizing few minutes of otherwise blind panic. I’d never run so fast in my life. I dared not to look back at the dark blue carapaces and giant pink wings, but constantly I could hear the relentless flapping – the flapping! – of all those wings. Worse, the dark sky began to release a heavy torrent of water (rain?) that made finding my footing along the rocky hilltops an even more difficult endeavor.
 
For her part, and for all I could tell, Bolt Action performed admirably, exercising the quick and precise aim afforded her by a lifetime of firearm training and a SATS-capable suit. Still, she could not take them out fast enough for me. I ran for at least four minutes at full tilt. I didn’t even know I could do that.
 
The flapping grew closer even as its frequency decreased, Bolt Action dropping most of them. Every so often, a butterfly would break off from the swarm to harass her, but when that happened, I would levitate Rip’s shotgun so that it interfered with their wings. That didn’t turn the monstrous bugs on the gun, though, somehow they seemed to know that I was the source of the magical aura. Instead, the stray insect would begin heading right for me again.
 
I wondered how many butterflies were left? I turned my head just for a moment to look back and check. This was a mistake. There was only one, and that heavily wounded, but in the time it took to turn my head and look, I missed my next step, twisted my hoof on a rock, and stumbled, giving the butterfly all the time it needed to reach me. I felt a huge bite on my flank, and then heard it drop to the ground at last. I was still standing, and all the butterflies were dead. Ha!
 
I tried to raise a hoof and a victory smile to Bolt Action, but collapsed instead. My body tumbled down the hill, not coming to rest until I hit the gravel ballast of the railroad. I was now scraped and bruised badly, but that was nothing compared to the massive amount of pain that suddenly erupted from the open wound in my flank.
 
I felt fire erupt through my veins, rushing through my blood with every increasingly rapid heartbeat. Every cell seemed to feel its effects, even the tips of my eyelashes and hooves. I clenched my teeth together and hissed in pain, twisting to try to get up. I needed Antidote!
 
Bolt Action ran up to me. “Silver!” She said, her voice half worry, half anger.
 
I tried to form the necessary words, but my tongue seemed to be losing all its coherence quickly. “A…antidote. need. Ven…om.” She fished out one of her three antidote cartridges. Doctor Muffin Top’s General Antidote, it advertised, with the slogan “Widdul Guy not Feewing so good?” and a picture of a cartoon colt with his tongue sticking out and X’s for eyes.  I grabbed it with the little bit of telekinesis I could manage, and shoved it into my pipbuck’s quick-med slot. Relief came as quickly as the pain had.
 
Bolt Action was saying something, but I couldn’t really hear the words. Instead, I half-pushed, half-crawled my way towards the pony who had been attacked in the first place. I took out the mostly empty cartridge and injected it into one of his multitude of open wounds. “Bowl Ackshun, c’n I get a health poshun ober here?” I asked. My tongue was as numb as my ears from Antidote, so I indicated the pony with a forehoof. The stallion opened his eyes and pushed my hoof away.
 
“Save it.” He murmured. My hearing was coming back.
 
Bolt Action agreed with him. “At the rate you get injured? I’m keeping all of these for you, Silver, for your own good.”
 
I scowled, but the stallion shook his head. He was a middle-aged pony, tan and broadly built. He didn’t have any of the symptoms of disease like Rip and his gang, but it was hard to tell thanks to the quantity of blood and dust that was now thick in the afternoon rain. His expression was contorted with pain, and he spoke slowly, with emphasis on enunciation. “Appreciate the offer though. Glad I could meet somepony better ‘n raiders out here.”
 
“Raiders?” I said, but he wasn’t really in a condition to answer questions. “Bolt Action, you’ve gotta give it to him! He’s dying!”
 
She stamped a hoof. “I do not! He’s taken way more hits than you! I don’t have that much Antidote left! And I’m not going to let you die later this afternoon just to prolong somepony’s suffering on account of your conscience!”
 
“We have to do something, though!”
 
A trembling, weak tan hoof kicked me. “Told you to save it. Got mor’n poison wrong with my insides.” I inflated a little, preparing to disagree, but he cut me off. “See you’ve got one of them fancy wrist-watches. Would you take a message and a package for me? It’s important.”
 
“Yes.” I said.
 
Bolt Action, ever more practical, asked, “What message? What package? Where, and to who?
 
“Take…take it to my son Honormark. In Tenpony. Jus’ record my…final words. I’ll give you the rest of my stuff, except give the package to Honormark.”
 
I set my Pipbuck to record. “Okay. When you’re ready.”
 
The stallion shifted. “This message is intended for my sons, Honormark, Get Set, and Go, in Tenpony tower, by Red Day. Courtesy of… what’s your name, son?”
 
“Silver Tongue.”
 
“Courtesy of Silver Tongue. Seaspike. My sons, if you’re hearing this, then it means that the pony I gave it to has proven trustworthy. I’ve given him the package. Please reward him with one object of his choice from our collection. I died on the old Railroad between Froggy Bottom and Apploosa, to killerflies after being chased into the hills by some raiders.”
 
So the deadly butterflies were called “Killerflies.” And what were raiders? Some kind of mutant animal?
 
“I have not found Sundae yet, though I did recover the artifact, in the care of the pony bearing this message. My sons…I love you. You’ve always made me so proud, yes, even you, Get Set, you rascal. Live on for me. Know that wherever I go, I’ll be watching you as long as you need me. And if Sundae’s up there, I’m sure she’s watching you too. I love you.”
 
Red Day then pointed at a lump in his pack. I reached in and took it out. It was a perfectly smooth, ovular stone, dark green with light green spots. He pressed it into my hooves, then all his torso muscles relaxed, and his head flopped down in the mud. “That’s the package. Can’t believe I’m bein’ saved by Rangers. Ironic. You can have all the stuff I’ve got on me, just see the package to Honormark. I mean it. Take it.”
 
“Rangers? Steel Rangers? We’re not- Do you know where we can find them?” He weakly shook his head. “Well, I’m surprised you’re still talking. That venom shut me down almost instantly.”
 
“Earth Ponies are more resilient than unicorns,” Bolt Action murmured.
 
I waited for a response from Red Day. None ever came. None ever would come.
 
It’s not that I had never seen death before. Ponies in Stable Seven were mortal just like anypony else. But for some reason the mental image I had was of a wizened old stallion in a casket, with a peaceful expression. The kind of thing at a Stable Seven funeral service, before the body was thrown into the general waste disposal unit and the casket put back into storage.
 
The image in front of me was not that, nor was it the dry and distant remains of the cave entrance in front of Stable Seven’s door. This was grotesque. Red Day’s tongue hung out of his mouth, not enough to be exaggerated like in foalhood comics, just enough to be disturbing and animal, especially when combined with his staring eyes. A stench began to emanate from him that was not merely body odor: his bowels had relaxed. Being poisoned to death by giant butterflies randomly out in the wilderness was not my idea of a noble death.
 
I closed those staring eyes and gingerly pushed the tongue back inside the mouth. We needed to bury him. Even if my pack hadn’t been stolen, I wouldn’t have had a copy of the prayers for the dead like the one Chaplain Cross kept in his office, but I knew them at least well enough that I could hold at least a small service. Even softened by the rain, the dusty ground was too hard to dig out, especially by hoof. Instead, I began levitating rocks around. We could at least build a semblance of a grave.
 
Rocks in horn, I turned back to the body that had been Red Day. To my shock, Bolt Action was stripping off the barding and packs from Red Day. “What are you doing?” I shouted, some sense of righteous indignation rising, although I didn’t know quite why.
 
“What’s it look like I’m doing?” she snapped back. “You weren’t planning on wearing him for protection, were you?”
 
“But that’s his stuff!”
 
“Weren’t you listening? He gave it to you. It’s yours now, and don’t you complain, because you need it!”
 
But this – this felt like robbing the dead, even if Red Day had said I could take his stuff, that didn’t mean we should! “Look, I know we’re short on supplies right now, but do we have to take his barding? It didn’t do him any good!”
 
She pointed a hoof at my injured rear end and his undamaged croupier, the hindquarters of his barding. Point taken. “If you’re going to go using yourself as bait all the time, you have to wear barding!”
 
“I do not always use myself as bait!” I said, and mentally reviewed the past two days’ events. “Okay, maybe I do, but still, it’s robbing the dead!”
 
“It is not! He gave it to you! And even if it was, I’d still do it. You need the stuff, Silver, don’t go turning away a goddess-send like this just because you think death is icky!” I dropped my rocks, turned around and began to walk away to get more, huffing as I did so, but Bolt Action wasn’t nearly finished with me. “You’re always doing this! You’re always in trouble and I always –Always!— have to get you out!”
 
I returned with another load of rocks. “I do not. I can handle myself!”
 
Bolt Action had finished stripping Red Day’s body. “You… handle… yourself… like a foal.” she said, grunting as she began to move the rocks into place around the body. I inhaled to make an objection from my hilltop location, but she cut me off. “You’re not nearly as smart as you think you are, and you’re half as charming. You wouldn’t last six hours on your own.”
 
“I could too. I have all the same survival training that you do. And I’ve gotten us past all the dangers so far.”
 
“Training doesn’t matter for marbles if you’re going to open the door for any random pony. What was that this morning? Why was that door open?” She didn’t wait for me to reply, but puffed out her chest, threw back her head, and began talking in an artificially deepened voice, “I know, ‘I’m Silver, and I can handle any of these Outside ponies! I’ll just charm them into taking me to their leader! We’ll find the Rangers in no time!’ Never mind that they have ponyhide clothes and are obviously dangerous criminals! ‘It’ll be a walk in the atrium, I shouldn’t even wake up Bolt Action to ask her how to handle it. She’s just my backup plan anyway!’”
 
“I think you’re being a little unfair, there was no way I could have known they looked so dangerous.” Confound that helmet, I couldn’t read her face or emotions, filtered through an opaque mask and a tin voice. I had a pretty good idea, though.
 
“You don’t have the guts to suck it up and just do what you need to do, you’re just doing whatever you feel like and only respecting ponies when they agree with you, or strike you as interesting!”
 
That wasn’t at all true. I had lots of respect, like for Smoothbore, or Chaplain Cross. Just not for ponies like the Overmare. And – “I have respect for you,” I said. No wait, that was the wrong thing to say. That mask was really throwing me off!
 
Bolt Action snorted hard enough, I could swear I saw steam escape from her muzzle-plate. “Shut up. I don’t want to hear any sweet talking out of you! I know you better than that!” I placed rocks one after another on top of and around Red Day’s body. Bolt Action went to go get larger rocks, one at a time. “If you really respected me, you wouldn’t be using me as a tool all the time, just because I’m stuck in this glorified tin can! You’d actually take the time to listen to me, before you run into a nest of trouble expecting me to pull you out!”
 
“Well I haven’t heard you object to any of our plans so far. If you had a problem then you should have said something.”
 
“I have – I am saying something! It’s not my fault that anytime you know I’ll have a problem with a plan, you’re already halfway through with it before I can get a word off!”
 
I still wanted to disagree, but a little Silver, feeling very little indeed, told me that she was right. We’d finished the grave, or cairn rather, and Bolt Action held up the  barding that Red Day had worn. “Alright,” I assented, “I’ll run my plans by you from now on.” 
 
“AND?”
 
“And I’ll wait for you to give your two cents.”
 
Bolt Action sniffed. “Alright. I suppose it’ll have to do. 

I took Red Day’s barding from Bolt Action and put it on. It was of good construction, though it was a bit battle-damaged.  Most of the mud and blood had washed away in the rain. It was dark blue with gold-trim, and consisted of enameled metal plates in most of the important areas, each backed with a pocket that was intended to hold a hard ballistic plate. About half of the major plates were shattered and the enamel was dented and chipped in places. It was held in place with some brass buttons, and trimmed around the collar with similar gold-colored piping that ended in “Absolutely Everything: Yes We Deliver!”

After I was finished, Bolt Action checked it over and said, “Fine. We still going the same way as before?”

“I thought you wanted to make the plans now,” I said, but she shook her head, shedding water droplets. “No? Well now we have a location to get to. I just have no idea where Tenpony is. I don’t even know the general area of Equestria it’s in. But it’s not like we have anywhere worth backtracking to.” Still, without a clear long term goal, I decided to focus on the short term. “How about we get out of the rain?”
 
“I hadn’t really noticed.”
 
I threw a glare at Bolt Action. The rain struck against her armor, resounding with every drop. The armor had a built in magical repellant on the visor like it had on the mane crest and tail openings that not only offered additional protection, but also kept the visor dry. I on the other hoof was less immune to the rain’s effects. My matted mane hung down in my eyes, trickling drops streamed down my muzzle, tickling my nostrils and making me snort. “Well, I want out of the rain. Let’s go up to the ridge and try to find ourselves a shelter.”
 
Bolt Action nodded, and I began to trek up the very ridge I had fallen down. Water flowed in a small stream down the path of my fall. It might have been a consequence of my sterile stable upbringing, or just the fact that my white coat stained easily and was hard to clean, but I turned out to be quite squeamish when it came to mud. I ended up trying my utmost to jump only from stone to stone, sometimes substituting a dead bush or two. For the most part, I was successful, but still I ended up with mud all up my cannons and hooves.
 
Once at the top, I again surveyed the expansive landscape. The canyon from which we had ascended was now out of sight, even though we had only been traveling for a few hours. My visibility now was less than it had been before, as sheets of blue grey water rolled across the landscape. Following the trail of the railroad, I eventually spotted an old station. I could barely see it through the wet haze, but the ancient wooden building did indeed seem to be more or less intact, at least on the outside. It wasn’t large by any means. The two stories were closely built, and there was no platform for ponies to get off, just a rotted  water tower and an empty box dug into the ground that had once held either wood or coal, just a little refuel and repair stop for trains. Anything more was obscured by the rain.
 
“We can wait in there,” I said, indicating the two-story shack.
 
“Alright, but let’s look at what all we got from Red Day before we do anything else.”
 
“Sure. Right after we get out of the rain.” I started to walk off, but Bolt Action had already begun rifling through the saddlebags. “What, now?”
 
“Yeah. Before we run into anymore trouble.”
 
I didn’t want to spend any longer being soaked than absolutely necessary, but my comfort was a poor argument, so I found another reason. “We probably don’t want all that stuff to get wet. Might ruin it.”
 
“Better we lose some equipment now than dying from something else just because we didn’t know what we were carrying. But I see your point. Put up your directional shield while the pipbuck sorts it.” I grimaced at the perfectly reasonable solution she had devised. My shield was for combat, not raindrops. Although considering my combat magic proficiency, maybe it was better suited to umbrella duty.
 
I focused my mind, putting a barrier above us, willing any raindrops to deflect themselves away from the saddlebags, and a convex blue transparent shell manifested overhead. Soon the patter of water on my back became a pins-and needles sensation in the back of my mind. My mane still dripped water in rivulets down my face, still tickling my nostrils, but at least I wasn’t getting any wetter.
 
Bolt Action delved in and out of the bags for a while, eventually coming out with more ammunition for her rifle and a second earth pony rifle of the same caliber. It could have gone faster perhaps if I had sorted the bags with my telekinesis, but I wasn’t one of those rare unicorn-savants who could maintain multiple spells at once. After we finished, we re-packed the bags and split the ammunition. I took the rifle, checking that it was in semi-auto mode, and holstered it. “Ready?” I asked Bolt Action. She kicked her reload lever and nodded.
 
I dropped the shield, and was rewarded with the sensation of a bucket of cold water being dumped on my head. The rain had definitely intensified. In irritation, I put the shield back up, set at an angle in front of us to counteract wind.
 
We walked towards the station in a meandering, zigzag path, as I went seeking the driest patches of ground and whatever shelter the occasional large rock or dead tree could afford. Consequently it took us much longer to get to the station than necessary. As we neared it, we were finally able to peer through the curtains of obscuring rain and see it in detail. “Eugh. Look!” Bolt Action indicated the billboard I had seen from afar, before the rain had intensified. Up close, we could see that whatever sign had been there originally had been covered by a splattered reddish-brown paint, and the centerpiece was the flayed and barely recognizable corpse of a mare. It wasn’t an illustration of a corpse. It was a real one, strung up by improvised chains made from link fencing.
 
The sight made my insides squirm. The corpse had been mutilated in such a way that it was evident exactly how each injury had been made. Special attention had been made to destroy the most sensitive portions of her body, with the skin and flesh scraped down on the inside of every joint. On the outside of the joints, a nail had been driven into the caps, anywhere where there was a nerve. The entire abdomen looked like a vivisection half through, with the skin spread open. It looked like somepony had decided to connect her genitals to her rectum with a haphazard reciprocal saw.
 
I didn’t have the experience or the training to venture a guess as to how old the corpse was, but it was probably fairly recent. If it hadn’t been for the rain, I would probably have been able to smell its fetid stink as well.
 
A splattering of rain hit me, and I refocused my magic umbrella, which had faltered. I only had a hundred yards or so until we reached the building, and we could rest. Come on, Silver. Almost there. BANG!
 
A shattering pain rattled through my skull, the sensation of shattering a dozen dishes and then tallying their pieces on a blackboard with my own horn. Red and green spots danced before my eyes as I shook myself. I knew the sensation, I knew what had happened. My shield had shattered. Why would it shatter?
 
My hearing and vision returned and I glanced around, gathering my wits. Bolt Action was crumpled in a pile of metal, water, and blood. And Blood! What -- How?
 
A gruff, shouting voice reached me through the rain, “Missed! You little shit unicorn with your fucking shield deflection! How d’ya like my anti-tank rifle, huh?” Now that I looked, squinting through the heavy rain, I could see a small pony on the balcony of the station.
 
Mystery solved. There was a nearby rocky outcropping where some larger rocks were exposed. I needed to get behind – Bolt Action needed to get behind it. Before he fired again. I dashed over to Bolt Action and helped her to her hooves.
 
There was a half-inch hole clean through her front right elbow, and a much larger exit hole through her ribs. Blood was pouring over the metal faster than the enchanted steel could clean itself, but the armor was already repairing the hole.
 
We hobbled over to the outcropping with what seemed like agonizing slowness, but we did at least make the deadline. “Are you alright?” Stupid question.

I looked around the outcropping, careful to keep the rock between myself and the sniper pony. There was another red bar rushing out of the building, this one a light yellow, jaundiced mare clutching a long knife in what remained of her teeth. I recognized that mare. It was Sunshine, the crazy mare from this morning, loping haphazardly through the muddy field.

I ducked back behind the outcropping and considered my possibilities. Unless I was very mistaken, Sunshine wasn't planning on a civilized conversation over recycled hay fries. 'shoot her' was my first thought, but even as it crossed my mind I immediately rejected it.

Other options, then. I would have liked to talk her down, but the crazed mare was probably deaf to anything I could say. Maybe I could shoot to wound, taking her down non-lethally. That would be a great idea, if I could trust my aim that much, but I could not. There was a possibility of hoof-to-hoof combat, and trying to knock Sunshine unconscious. That seemed like the best nonlethal option, except for one thing: I sucked at hoof to hoof combat.

An irregular thudding rounded the side of the outcropping. There was no more time to think. My hesitation was forcing me into the last, least beneficial option. Sunshine charged at me, her knife jutting forwards as if to stab me. I smoothly sidestepped, and aimed a back leg at her shoulder, but my blow ended up being a light tap – I had stepped too far, and was only within stage fighting distance. I didn’t have enough time to recover before she charged me again, this time swinging the knife wildly. Some jagged tears – the knife was too dull to really cut -- appeared in my haunch before I could roll out of her grasp.
 
A round exploded in the mud a yard away from my head, and I quickly thanked the Goddess that the weather was so poor. I jumped back up to my hooves and whirled to face the flurry of dull but savage cuts. I found it difficult to dodge her blade technique, or lack thereof, especially while trying to keep her between myself and the sniper. Still, injuries were limited to my forelegs rather than my torso, and none of them very deep. In a fury she made an ill-timed lunge, and I saw my opening to… what?
 
I had been so focused on defense, I hadn’t given a thought to offense. Which, by the way, was usually what Smoothbore said when I lost sparring matches. And I really couldn’t hurt this mare, could I? Even if I was philosophically and morally justified in killing her, some emotion within me immediately blocked out any of the numerous ways I could kill Sunshine. My hesitation spoiled the moment, and I ended up dodging around her back behind the outcropping.
 
She made another ill-timed, animal lunge at me again, but this time I was prepared. I quickly re-cast my shield spell, deflecting her just a little off-course. She swung wildly at me in passing, but I was ready, and instead took advantage of her throwing her all of her momentum in her head. Locking one forehoof over her shoulder and one crossed over her hooves, I pushed down with my own weight and pushed her into the mud.
 
Sunshine was so emaciated and weak that even my slim body had enough weight to keep her pinned. I kept her hooves pinned to the mud with each of my own. With her in such a vulnerable position, I realized that if I wanted to, I could easily kill her, but even though I had the ability, I still lacked the capacity. Without a next step in my plan, I simply held Sunshine there, her stunted, ragged breathing and futilely struggling scarred body still trying to kill me. My eyes locked with hers, and I “Peered” into her mind.
 
Sunshine wasn’t like the ponies of stable seven. Her life, though I didn’t know the details, was one of scarcity and want, of weakness and insecurity. Sunshine had only ever sought one thing, and that was stability. Lacking stability anywhere in life, she was overjoyed to find one thing in her life that consistently delivered. Even though it hurt, she still sought after it relentlessly. It was the one good in life, the only thing that could mitigate suffering. This one shred of stable consistency was the only thing of value, everything else was to be sacrificed, had been sacrificed until there was only a shred of the original pony left, and now it was the only thing one could cling to escape the horrors of what had been given up to it. We were the bottom of the ladder, below insects in dignity, sent to flush out the prey so that nopony else need bother. Even that had failed, and now the hunter was at the prey’s mercy. There was only one way this situation could go, now that we were too weak to resist the heavy, haughty male crushing our legs beneath us. We had no options, and so we clenched our teeth together to ride out the nearing pain, biting deep into…knife! Yes, knife, remover of problems! Knife took away bad ponies, bad animals, and even bad shooting pains in the legs. We seized knife and jerked forward into that proud, unscarred face, intent on making sure he at least remembered us after he was finished.
 
But as soon as the plan began to form, I took away her knife with my blue magic.
 
We turned our head in shame. We had even lost knife. At least he was more handsome than the others. A hot tear welled up, but we fought it. Maybe we could reach knife, or bite him, or something.
 
I shook my head rapidly, and whispered emphatically, “No! I would never do that!” I could help! If stability was what she needed, then I could help. I could give her a foundation apart from whatever that object was that had ruined her life. Not that I had a plan yet, of course, but I was sure something could be arranged. “You don’t have to be alone. We can—,” but before I could finish, a hole entered through one of Sunshine’s temples and exited around the opposite ear, and another head-splitting pain shot through my own skull, twice as bad as when my directional shield collapsed.
 
Blood ran out of the openings in Sunshine’s skull, offsetting the yellow coat. Those jaundiced eyes that had been so full of meaning a moment before stared on dully past me.
 
After a short moment, I looked up at Bolt Action, who lay with a gun aimed directly at Sunshine’s former body. A reproach arose inside me, but before I could put it into coherent speech, Bolt Action cut me off.
 
“Don’t look at me like that! She was trying to kill you! It’s not like you were going to do it, especially not when you’re hypnotized or whatever she was doing.”

“Hypnotized? Bolt Action, I was Peering!”

“Hey, blank stare, no blinking, not alert to the current emergency,” she gestured, pointing to her opaque eye-plate, though her expression, like always, was unreadable behind it, “it looked like hypnosis to me! What the heck is Peering?” 

“Y’know, the thing I used to do as a blank flank, where I could read someone really well and sorta become them. I just haven’t done it in a while because I ran out of ponies inside Stable Seven.”





She stared at me for a moment. Or at least in my direction. “Could you Peer at me? Or into me, whatever.”

I shook my head. “Nah. For one thing, I can’t do it through the mask. I have to see their face. Also, I probably Peered into you when we were foals. I can’t do it twice to the same individual, for some reason.” 

“So it’s like a one-time mind reading. Why haven’t you been using it?”

“Not quite as good as mind reading, I’m no mind-dominating unicorn. And I’m not supposed to just use it on ponies, that’s what my m-, er, other ponies told me anyway.” I changed the subject. “How are you healing up?”
 
“Not well. I can’t really move, and the armor needs to lock down so that it can regenerate itself. There weren’t enough healing charges in the armor to fix all my organs, and it’ll be another half-hour before the armor’s done fixing itself, too. But hey, if you keep on luring them back here, I can still shoot them.”
 
She looked much worse than she sounded, lying askance in the muddy sand. “Hm. That won’t solve our sniper problem unless he gets really stupid.”
 
As much as I hated to admit it, there were no alternatives. If only I was smart enough, clever enough, then I could think of a way to get out of this situation without killing anypony.

There was one way I could get out alive without killing anypony. I could run away. Between my shield, the rain, and my speed, I could outrun the sniper. Running away seemed like a viable solution.

I almost did, too. But then my eye landed on Bolt Action, injured beyond the power of just one healing potion, all that was left of our supplies. Supplies that we would have had if Bolt Action hadn't been covering for my recklessness. Supplies that she wouldn't have needed in the first place if she hadn't rushed in to save me from the Overmare's son.

I thought about the sniper again, and the mutilated corpse on the billboard. If I left Bolt Action here, then I was as good as killing her.

No, I couldn't run. And I didn't have the skills or the resources to get out of killing anypony in a confrontation and remain alive myself. There was only one more option I could think of, which was to wait behind this outcropping and hope the sniper got bored, and nopony else came behind here.

Just as I had settled on that last, desperate plan, a stallion sauntered around the rocks. "Hey Sunshine, aren'tcha done messing up those assholes? Don't tell me they had some Rage and you took it all yourself. Remember what the boss said: 'ya gotta share--'"

He cut off at the sight of a dead Sunshine and an only slightly scratched Silver. I gave one annoyed, tired glance at him, and slipped right into SATS before he could bring up his pistol.

I was out of options. There were no alternatives, and there was one thing that I was sure of: Silver couldn't solve this problem. Not the way I was.

I reached deep within myself, and found the feeling that refused to allow me to kill anypony. I quarantined it, shut it off.

It was as easy as flicking a switch.
 
My objective was to kill every hostile pony in the facility, most importantly the pony with the anti-materiel rifle. Immediately, however, I needed to eliminate this red bar on my Eyes-Forward Sparkle. Simple enough.

Still in SATS, I brought out Red Day's rifle, switched it to three round bursts, loaded it, and aimed it at the hostile red bar. SATS ended, and I fired three slugs into the center of his chest. Its pistol was barely out of its holster. That was simple. Why had it been so difficult before?

I stepped towards his body, levitating his firearm and visible ammunition into my own holster, in case I ran out of Red Day's ammo. I then backed up to one end of the outcropping, and flicked my long tail into the sniper's range. He didn't shoot, which meant either that he was smart and waiting for me to come out fully, or that he was bored and wasn't paying attention. Either way was fine for me. I flicked it again, and then sprinted – but remembered that I had a promise to keep to Bolt Action.
 
“I am going to enter the station and eliminate every hostile.” I said to Bolt Action. “Will return if successful, with medical supplies if possible, should there be any inside.” My companion said something that was incredulous and indicated that she understood. 
 
For the third time, I flicked my tail, and then sprinted to the other side of the outcropping, no hesitation. Unless I was very unlucky, he would be surprised enough by my change in position to not hit me the moment I left cover. I ran at full tilt towards the station, and after five galloping steps I slipped back into SATS to check on Sniper.

As expected. I slipped back out of the trance and leapt to the left just as an anti-materiel round whizzed through the space I would have occupied. We repeated the deadly choreography twice more at varying intervals and directions. There was shouting on his side, I may have frustrated him. Good. 

The immediate doorway was both ajar and clear. I crept in noiselessly, tapping my hooves down roundly from point to heel as I sidestepped out of the doorway and into shadow.

My eyes took a moment to adjust, but nopony was guarding the entrance to take advantage of my necessary hesitation. The guard's pistol was probably in my holster now.

Clutching the holster in my teeth, I crept up to a nearby doorway. The Pipbuck's EFS told me there were three hostile marks inside.

I spat out the rifle and gripped it in telekinesis instead. The rifle slowly floated over the doorway and around to the other side. Clutching the pistol in my mouth, I nonchalantly sidestepped into the doorway and slipped back into SATS. Two of the red bars on my compass were stallions. I shot both of them with the rifle before they could react to my presence, but the third mark was trickier.

It was a smaller, pawed and furry animal with a mouthful of teeth. It was similar to my textbook pictures of animals called "dogs," but it was ragged and mangy, completely different from the groomed cartoon animals I knew. It also wasted no time in lunging at me, all teeth and snarl. SATS had run out of charge.
I backpedaled back out the doorway and levitated the rifle back with me, so that the instant the "dog" bounded through, a trio of bullets pierced its head and it collapsed with a whimper.

There was no way the shack would be unalerted after the sound of the rifle. I stepped over the corpse of the dog and magically gathered the ammunition from the two corpses inside the room. The rounds they carried were either 9 or 10mm pistol rounds, and none for my assault rifle. I only had one more clip after this one ran out, and the pistols were not in nearly as good condition as Red Day had kept his rifles.

I holstered the pistol and put Red Day's rifle bit back in my mouth.

The room appeared to be some sort of kitchen, and closed shutters showed a register and bar intended for pre-war guests. There were some locked safes and some boxes of pre-war food in an adjoined office.

Shouting echoed in the hall behind me, along with corresponding red bars on my EFS. These ponies were clever enough to stop at the door, waiting to blast my head off if I ever decided to leave by the only exit.

I was a cleverer pony, though. After making a noisy show of prancing around the room, I hid behind a food preparation counter. I clacked the rifle against my pipbuck to approximate the sound of reloading.

The red bars took the bait, and two rushed in to capitalize on my 'misfortune.' A husky male voice called out a vague but emotion-filled threat of some sort. They rounded the counter at full tilt, clutching a tire iron and a metal pipe, both of which proved inferior to double trios from Red Day's SATS-assisted rifle. My hooves danced a bit more, imitating a scuffle, intending to lure the hesitating third bar.

No luck. The red bar stayed firmly planted by the doorway, no doubt ready to blast off the head of anypony who walked out of the room. It was being very quiet, too. Smart. If I didn't have my pipbuck on, it might have killed me, too.

Sidling up to the opposite side of the dry, rotten wood wall, I prepared a test for the red bar. The crowbar of one of the former red bars lifted itself out of its now slack mouth and flung itself out of the room at a quarry eel pace. A satisfying and informative BANG! arose from the other side of the wall, from the floor's height. Ah. Prone. I see.

The crowbar was followed by Red Day's rifle, aimed at the same elevation and direction as Red Bar's shot. A voice hissed a vulgar exclamation before I mentally squeezed the trigger. This was almost too easy.

The red bar disappeared from the blue EFS compass, and I stepped in through the doorway. The late Red Bar had another sawed-off shotgun, and after searching it’s body, I found five unspent shells, and a necklace made from dried pony tongues, many with bites taken out of them. 

There was nopony else inside the station, though I had yet to run into Mr. Anti-materiel rifle. The station had, besides the snack bar, a ticket and mail window with some locked safes and some old, torn propaganda posters covered with graffiti. There was a restroom that still had functional faucets and a locked first-aid box. Eventually I found stairs leading to the second level. Clutching the rifle in my teeth, I crept up the dark spiral stair, and opened the half-hinged door to a scene that likely would have made anypony retch.

It appeared to be some sort of dormitory or other group living space, but it had been converted into a very unsanitary torture space. Likely the mutilated body outside had been carved up on one of these tables. But that wasn't important.

What was important was that there was a blue non-hostile bar and a red one holding by fuchsia magic the very large anti-materiel rifle to the blue bar's head. A hostage situation. Hm.

It was equally important that there was a tripwire inches from the door. The red bar said something that was probably a twisted invitation, judging by the grin on red bar's face. That grin disappeared when I stepped over the trip wire.

Red Bar changed his tune then, probably bargaining. If Red Bar wanted to bargain, he was too late. That Silver was gone. Besides, I couldn't even understand the words. I simply stood there, calculating. The words weren't important.

It was important that Red Bar was a unicorn, and so could trip the wire behind me by telekinesis. I countered that strategy by putting my own telekinetic sheath over the trigger, immobilizing it. As a further countermeasure, i put up my shield behind me in case any other tricks were planned. It was what I would do in a situation like Red Bar's.

Red Bar's darting, envious eyes told me that he had not thought to do those things. More's the pity, then. Red Bar's mouth kept on working, making sounds that were probably speech.

The most important fact of all, of course, was that the time it would take for my rifle to fire, added to the time it would take bullet to travel the short distance and hit its mark was less than the reaction time of a pony. Still, it would be best to take Red Bar off-guard. Though it strained my magic and made my shield as strong as wet paper, I telekinetically took the rifle out of my mouth, keeping its barrel at the same angle. Then I opened my mouth to speak, and fired.

Objective complete, all red bars eliminated. Now what? Looting, perhaps. Maybe there was something in the first-aid box for blue bar here. Or Bolt Action.

I deliberated on my next objective, but before I set my course, I noticed a little nagging sensation within me. It wasn't a new sensation, but while I was in immediate danger it had ranked low on my priorities. Like a constant knocking on the door of a janitor's closet. I opened the metaphorical door, and flicked on the switch--

Cold. Wet. Dark. The floor was covered in blood, most old but some new. The room was strewn about with strips of ponyflesh. On one of the beds was an emaciated body that seemed to have survived multiple exploratory dissections by dull knives. It still breathed, somehow.

Goddess, what had I done? I had killed other ponies! And it was easy! Mares and Stallions- no foals, fortunately, but if there had been a hostile filly or colt, I would have killed them too without hesitation. I hadn't even given those ponies chances to surrender, even though the last one had even tried to bargain.

I was disgusted with myself, but there was no time. Bolt Action was still out there, wounded, and I needed to help her. I put away my thoughts and feelings until after the immediate danger was over.

It was easy to disarm the hastily-assembled grenade trip-wire, and I rushed down the stairs. The station was like those propaganda films I used to watch, where some invisible zebra killer would materialize out of the darkness and kill everypony one by one. Only all the ponies had been killed by me, not some monstrous zebra caricature. I stepped over the dead body of a mare whose eyes had been shot through. Her hair was held in a ridiculous style by some bobby pins, which I removed. I had read about ponies like Daring Do picking locks with bobby pins, in fact I knew more about bobby pins in conjunction with lockpicking than about any other purpose they might serve. I didn't have a screwdriver, but I did have Sunshine's dull knife. It should work just as well.

I went into the restroom, determined to pick the lock of the first aid kit. How did they do it in all those books and pip-boy serials? I had no idea where to start, but fortunately the pipbuck had a short basic tutorial. It was intended for a dedicated lockpick and torsion wrench, but maybe my bobby pins and small dull knife would do the trick anyway. I focused on the lock, ignoring the soft patter of rain on the roof and the periodic creaking of the ancient structure. Following the tutorial by the letter, I began by putting the knife in and applying pressure. Then, feeling around for the tumblers, I prepared to -click-. The Ministry of peace box opened up immediately with no effort. Perhaps the lock was only intended to keep out foals, teens, and now bandits, rather than obstruct any urgent medical care.
 
Inside the Ministry of Peace box was a pair of healing potions, some shots of Med-X painkillers, some bandages, scissors, and duct tape, as well as an instructional leaflet complete with illustrated examples of right and wrong treatment performed by a butter yellow pegasus with a pink mane on a phoenix. The yellow reminded me of Sunshine, and I threw away the leaflet in shame and disgust.
 
Focus Silver, Bolt Action needs you.
 
I advanced slowly, stepping over corpses that I could not bear to look at, even in the near-darkness of the station hallway. Once out of the door, the soft patter of rain transferred from a distant rhythmic sound to an immediate physical sensation. I walked around the muddy, puddle-filled craters where Rip’s shots had landed.
 
Bolt Action had left the cover of the rocks and was struggling to crawl through the mud. Judging from the track, she had dragged herself a third of the distance between the outcropping and the train station, digging at the soft ground with the armor. Seeing me alive and relatively unharmed, she flopped down and stopped struggling. I galloped to her.
 
“Hold still, I need to get these into the right slots.” I said, telekinetically flipping open the cover to the armor’s auto-doc refill center. “You should’ve stayed in cover, what if that sniper was still targeting you?”
 
“Everything…quiet. Thought you were…if so, I’d be dead either…” she cut off as the suit’s auto-doc sent the first potion directly to her mouth through a vein in the undermesh. I pulled off the cork of the second one and poured it carefully into the reservoir. It didn’t immediately drain the whole potion, which was a good sign. “Did you…?”
 
I made no direct answer. Don’t think about that now. Med-X, put the Med-X in the auto-doc. The slots for Med-X were conveniently labeled, and I placed both syringes in their corresponding slots, though neither fired.
 
In a matter of minutes, Bolt Action was on her feet again, good as new. We started walking towards the now-quiet station in equal silence. On arriving at the door, Bolt Action tried to break the awkward tension that always forms when ponies are together and quiet. “I’m surprised you managed to stop that sniper. What did you end up doing, reading him Equinas until he fell asle…oh.” She stopped when her suit adjusted itself to the darker corridor and she saw more clearly the carnage I had wrought. Yeah, I didn’t really have any words, either.
 
“We should search the building for anything useful. Maybe we can even find the stuff they stole this morning. I’ll do top if you’ll do bottom.” There were fewer bodies on the second floor; I wouldn’t have to stare my actions in the face as much.
 
She nodded, and I walked upstairs reveling in the near silence. I felt like I could hear every raindrop on the roof, and every breath of wind. Wait a minute, that wasn’t wind breathing. It was a pony. The blue-bar pony that the unicorn was holding hostage! My mental tunnel vision could be a real problem sometimes. I rushed over the body of sniper-pony to the mutilated mare, who was looking at me with wary eyes.
 
“It’s okay, I’m not here to hurt anypony. Especially you, you look like you’ve been through a lot, though we don’t really have medical supplies to spare.” I said. My eyes darted around, looking for clues. Nearby were a few tools, mostly kitchen implements, covered in gore. The most heavily abused tool was a long, thin flat cheese grater, and my eyes involuntarily crawled to her destroyed ‘equipment’ and I shuddered. With a cheese grater!
 
Her voice was weak, tired, but full of hurt and fury. “What the hell did you do to my husband?” she gasped.
 
I looked down in surprise at the body below me. “That was your husband? But he was holding a gun to your head!” What kind of a deranged pony could do that to his wife, or to anypony?
 
“Not the raider. Your armor. It belonged to a pony named Red Day, didn’t it? Killed him and now you’re going to finish the job.” She turned her head, giving me an incriminating glance which made my insides squirm both from the intent and from how much physical and emotional damage was evident in her face. I avoided her eyes, though. I didn’t think I could handle Peering at her.
 
“I’m not a killer.” I said, then immediately backtracked. “Well, I am now, but I wasn’t before just now. And I was doing my best not to fight them, until…”
 
“Hmph. Not…not what I saw. Most ruthless eyes… ever seen. Didn’t even register that…even existed. If…had the strength, ’d kill you right now. If…is true, and I don’t believe it, you’re… most dangerous thing to happen to the wasteland.”
 
Hey, wait a minute. I had just saved this mare, and avenged her abusers! She should be thanking me for a job well done, not lecturing me! Feeling quite a bit put out, I unrolled the bandages that were in the First Aid box. They weren’t much, but maybe the thin coating of regenerative salve on the inside would help this mare survive long enough to get to whatever passed for proper doctors out here.
 
“S-save it. You ain’t seen what they done to my insides. Now that nopony’s stabbing me with stims every ten minutes, I can actually die. And I ain’t accepting help from nopony who murdered my Red Day.”
 
“I did not kill him! He died from Killerfly stings! I can prove it, too, I have his last words last words and everything!” I navigated on my Pipbuck and set it to play on external speakers, and Red Day’s voice crackled to life.
 
“This message is intended for my sons, Honormark, Get Set, and Go, in Tenpony tower, by Red Day. Courtesy of… what’s your name, son? (“Silver Tongue.”) Courtesy of Silver Tongue. Seaspike. My sons, if you’re hearing this, then it means that the pony I gave it to has proven trustworthy. I’ve given him the package. Please reward…”
 
She reached over and slapped the pipbuck, and the message cut out. “Don’t… don’t wanna be one-upped in dyin’. I’ll see him soon enough.”
 
“I suppose so.” My indignation was rapidly disappearing. “So you’re Sundae.”
 
"Hey, Silver!" came the voice of Bolt Action, from down the stairs. The cheerful note of her voice was dissonant with the corpse next to me. Heavy thumping came as she came up the stairs. "You'll never guess what I found in the back room. Your bag! Hah! Turns out these ponies were the same ones that robbed us this morning! I mean, sure, the food's gone and the medicine, but at least you got the bag! Justice in the wasteland!"

She poked her metal head around the door frame, noting the scene without visibly reacting.
"Justice? I didn't administer any justice to these ponies."

"'Course you did. Who do you think killed all these mares? And lots of other evil stuff, too, I bet." She waved a hoof. "Silver Tongue, deliverer of heavenly justice to evildoers."

Bolt Action's inexplicable good mood wasn't infectious. While I did like the thought of being some kind of comic book hero, what I had done was not anything nearly as grand. I had --

"Hey, if you're going to sit there and mope or whatever, go downstairs and try picking the locks on those mailroom lockers. I was going to try, but the helmet and hoofguards kinda preclude fine tool manipulation. Meanwhile I'll collect what I can up here." She quickly scanned the room. "What were you doing all this time, anyway? All the stuff is still out."

I nodded my head in the direction of the corpse. "Paying attention to Sundae's last words." At a blank look (I still couldn't read her expression through the helmet), I clarified. "Y'know, Red Day's wife."

"Hm. That's sad I guess. But it doesn't really help us now, does it?"

There was just no spoiling Bolt Action's mood. I shook my head with a small smile at her cheerful pragmatism. Maybe it was infectious.

Some of the mailboxes downstairs proved too difficult to open, but I got several of them. Most were disappointingly empty, but one contained some outdated firearm periodicals that Bolt Action might enjoy reading. I was surprised that they still were readable, pristine even.

The time spent lockpicking forced me to focus on the task at hand, my senses alert for the faint clicking of the tumblers, and my mind focusing on the delicate telekinetic movements of both the knife and the bobby pins. Maybe I would get really lucky and find an actual lockpick kit.

The activity of lockpicking took a lot more time to accomplish than I had been led to believe from my cheap escapist stable fiction. I had gone into it with the completely unreasonable expectation of finishing within a few minutes. Instead, it took a couple hours, most of which
was taken up by a determined effort to ignore Bolt Action flipping through the pages of the ancient magazines. Finally, I gave up on the last few locks. They were too difficult for my novice lockpick skill.

Bolt Action had taken up residence on the covered platform of the rail station. The tin roof still echoed a quiet drumroll, punctuated by an occasional percussive thunderbolt. She was curled up, her armor forming a barrier between the ancient pages of firearm filly and the rain. I flopped down heavily and almost baited conversation with a loud sigh, but caught myself and tried to cut it off halfway, a tactic that left me coughing in spasms for several seconds. Bolt Action ignored me and my fit altogether.



 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Footnote: Level Up
New Perk: Telekinetic Precision – You have a steady horn on your head for when you need to count sand, thread a needle, or keep a pin in a grenade.