Fallout Equestria: Influx

by Lex the Pikachu

First published

A mare wakes up to discover she is in the Wasteland and not who she used to be. Determined to discover the truth she heads out into the wasteland. But the truth can be disturbing.

This is a Fallout Equestria (primarily) and Terminator crossover.

As the war between Equestria and the zebras pressed on, many members of the Ministries conceived of desperate strategies to end it through magical and technological creations of questionable nature. One of these was Project Infiltrator, a top secret project of the Ministry of Awesome. It's goal: to create a super spy that was the perfect blend of pony and machine. But just as its first subject was ready, the megaspells dropped, destroying Equestria and creating the Wasteland.

190 years later, Crystal Eclair awakens in a world of ruin and violence, completely clueless as to what happened to Equestria and herself. Her confusion grows into horror as she discovers that she is no longer a pony, but now a cybernetic zebra. With no other choice left, she sets out to find answers to her predicament. How will she handle the truth if she finds it? Will she find friends who can help her in a world that trusts no one? And what if those who have done this to her are still out there, eager for her to serve a new sinister purpose?

PS. This is not a Prequel to Broken Steel despite what a couple of websites that link back to this story say.

(Chapters 1 to 12 Edited by Alycorn~(CF), New Editor Double R Forrest. New description credit to Double R Forrest )

Prologue

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Fallout Equestria: Influx

Prologue


My name is Crystal. I’m twenty six years old, and a crystal pony from the Crystal Empire. Sadly, I have never had the sparkle of a crystal pony, since my ill health has kept me in a state of depression which has left my pink coat and yellow mane dull and gloomy.

When I was born, they said I had a weak heart and needed several operations before I could even be taken home by my parents. I was in constant pain, I could feel my heart beating with irregular patterns as it struggled not to give out. I could never go out and play with other foals or do anything that would cause me to exert myself as it would put too much stress on my heart. You can say I had a bad foalhood.

A weak heart was only the start of my problems as I was also getting infected with all kinds of illnesses on an almost regular basis. A doctor told my parents and I that my immune system was extremely weak, which meant I could easily contract illnesses from viruses and bacteria that a normal healthy filly wouldn’t suffer from. Thankfully, most of them were curable but meant a trip to the hospital every time if I contracted so much as a head cold.

When I was five, my parents moved down into Equestria so they could seek out better medical facilities to better support me. I had contracted the flu from somepony on the train down to Las Pegasus, which meant I spent the first day in our new home in the hospital.

Again.

I didn’t like it for a while since I hated the sun and the heat, but after several years I grew used to the climate and other changes of the Marejave. It was nothing like the cold north I’d grown accustomed to.

When I was around eight years old and at school, I suffered a trip and tumbled down a short flight of stairs which was like what, five steps? Anyway the result was that I landed on my ass hard and broke my hip, again finding myself in a hospital to get treated. During my examination it was discovered I had brittle bones, which meant a hard enough fall or impact like the one I’d just had would fracture or break my bones.

My life was a complete and utter mess as I missed out on a lot of school, from spending time off sick to the fact that I couldn’t live like a normal filly. I couldn’t have friends over to play as I could probably either get sick from them, break a bone while playing with them, or drop dead with my heart giving out. It was awful, and I got more and more miserable with each passing day.

Things just wouldn’t work for me no matter what I was given or treated for. Then, the war broke out between the zebras and us. The war hit us hard, and my father was forced to give up his job to enlist. My mother would have been drafted too if she hadn't been required to care for me. She had to quit her job too as her employer wouldn’t allow her to take much time off. The war was requiring a lot from many companies. My mother thought the newly built Fluttershy Hospital in Las Pegasus would finally be able to help me as the Ministry of Peace was pushing for better medical care, and with Fluttershy, being the strong, compassionate pony that she was, may have been able to help. Unfortunately, the focus wasn’t on health problems like mine, but rather war related. Her hospital did give better medical care than the older General Hospitals did, but it wasn’t enough.

I was still going in and out on a regular basis.

I managed to finish school with some qualifications, not good ones mind you, but at least I got some when I was sixteen.

I got a job in a warehouse, standing or sitting by a computer and processing parcels to be sent off to wherever they needed to go. It was thankfully not a job that needed much exertion, so it didn’t put pressure on my weak heart or my brittle bones. I was able to at least earn a wage. I even made a couple of friends there who didn’t act nice because they felt they had to on account of my medical conditions. They were real friends who looked at me as if I wasn’t any different form anypony else.

I actually felt happy for a short time, at last I could experience a somewhat normal life for a change. But of course, that didn’t last.

Being a warehouse, the place was dusty. So much so that some boxes that have sat on the shelf for a long time were nearly black. The dust I was breathing in soon began to affect my lungs, making it harder for me to breathe properly. I didn’t complain about my breathing until I collapsed from lack of oxygen, which was probably a bad decision in hindsight.

After eight months I was forced to resign as I couldn’t work in that sort of environment anymore, which put me into another depression.

Thankfully, the damage to my lungs was healed at the hospital as they were in better shape than the rest of me. Though this meant they’d recover, it also meant I could never take another job like that again due to the health risks.

I ended up getting a job where I could work from home: this was being a Sales Pony for Stable-Tec when they opened up a branch in Las Pegasus. At first, when the war was in its infancy, the products were more or less everyday items created by Stable-Tec, and it was a boring job then as barely anyone would be interested. I spent maybe a couple of days a week phoning up customers to try and sell something and they would either say they were not interested or just hang up as soon as I began. Those days were frustrating as hell.

As the war dragged out and things began to grow more intense, Stable-Tec started to get me to sell guns, armour, spells and other things that seemed to fit more with the war, rather than everyday life and my career in selling took off then as lots of ponies were pretty interested in those things.

The front line soon came to the Marejave as Luna’s soldiers began holding Horseshoe Dam against Zebra attacks. It was said on the news that the Zebras were attempting to burst the dam. That would have been horrible for more than one reason. One, the loss of the dam would mean Las Pegasus and the surrounding area would be without power. And two, the many towns along the Coltorado River would be swept away, taking thousands of lives.

With the war growing more and more intense, things were getting more desperate, Stable-Tec began building their Stables in and around the Marejave. I stopped selling things and was told to sell places at the numerous Stables being built. The demand was high, and I ended up talking to some rather abusive customers. Stable-Tec later gave me a questionnaire; I was to ask customers to see if they could be eligible to be sold a position in a Stable. They didn’t want the wrong type of ponies getting a place, since they said the purpose of the Stables was to save ponies worth saving.

For eight years that had been my life, phoning up ponies to sell them shit. It wasn’t so bad, as being able to work from home meant that I wasn’t in and out of the hospital that frequently. My visits to the hospital in those eight years however, were becoming more and more worrisome. To save explaining everything, I will simply say that with my health problems, my body was now beginning to shut down on me. My condition had been re-diagnosed as terminal.

It hurt beyond all reason to know I was going to die young. I never had a special somepony or even a crush. I never got to experience the finer things in life. My mother was distraught as well, she has spent most of her life looking after me and to know she was going to lose me broke her heart.

It happened around the same time I turned twenty five, my body finally decided it didn’t want to work for me anymore. I was admitted to the hospital when things got really bad for me. It turned out that my body could no longer support itself, and was breaking down. There was nothing that could have been done apart from make me as comfortable as possible in my final moments. I can’t begin to describe how horrible it was to lay there, watching the seconds tick by, knowing this was it, the end of the line.

I didn’t want to die. Nopony does really, but I didn’t want to die because I never honestly had a chance to live, and I went as far as to pray to Nightmare Moon herself for a chance to live. Yeah, I know, that’s pathetic of me but I was desperate.

After my twenty sixth birthday, I could barely move my limbs with how weak I felt. I had been given only months to live after that. A few days after my birthday a doctor, well I think he was a doctor, came to visit me.

He looked a lot more serious than the nurses and doctors I’d seen but it didn’t matter.

“Good afternoon Miss Eclaire. I won’t insult you in asking how you are doing since I know how bad things are for you. I am very sorry to have learned about your condition and, it pains me to know a young mare such as yourself will die without having a chance to live your life to the fullest. I can see you are tired so I’ll cut to the chase. I am with the Ministry of Peace’s Medical Research department and I would like to offer you a chance to help future generations of Equestria from suffering the illnesses that have robbed you of your life,” He said in a sincere and kind voice.

I didn’t think much on it. I mean, if it means that future foals don’t get to suffer what I suffered, I’d be happy to help how I can. “I will be happy to help any way I can,” I answered. I thought I saw a ghost of a smirk appear on his muzzle but it was most likely a trick of the light as he wore a grateful smile as he approached my bed and levitated a document over to me.

“Thank you Miss Eclaire. Please sign this contract so that when you eventually pass on, we will have possession of your body so we can conduct our medical research. I am sure, with the research we will be able to conduct with your body we can spare hundreds, maybe even thousands of foals the pain and suffering you have had to endure.”

I nodded weakly as I took a pen he had offered to me into my mouth, and sloppily scribbled my signature on the dotted line he indicated. Once I had signed the piece of paper, he took it back with a grateful smile. I opened my mouth to say something, but instead, started to hack and cough.

“Oh dear, here, have a drink,” He said sympathetically and offered me a drink from a plastic bottle filled with a filmy looking liquid inside it. Too weak to refuse, I took a big gulp of it, which thankfully cleared and soothed my throat but made me cringe due to the taste. I hate lemons.

He gave his thanks and sympathy one more time before he left the room. All I can do now is lay here in this hospital bed, and await my death. I yawned feeling extremely tired, and decided to close my eyes to get some sleep.

XXXXXX

The doctor walked down the halls of the hospital after leaving Crystal’s room, looking sad until he exited the hospital and got into his Ministry of Awesome issued chariot. With a nod to the driver, he sat back into the plush seat as his driver began to pull him away from the hospital. Now, in the privacy of his private chariot, he allowed a sinister smile to grow on his face.

“That went as well as I predicted,” He said to himself as he lifted his left foreleg and activated his broadcaster.

“Doctor Pear Shape, the subject has been acquired,” He said into the device.

“For the thousandth time it’s just Pear,” Came the reply from the pony on the other end. “So are we ready to get started Colonel?”

“Indeed we are doctor. The subject has signed her body to us and we’ll be ready to collect her in the morning. I have administered the serum to make it appear she has died,” He paused for a moment. “Do we have everything we need from Project Steelpony?” He asked to double check.

“Yes sir we do.”

“Good, and the replacement heart from Project Chimera?”

“Yes sir, and a pair of lungs since the medical report did say the subject had an issue with her lungs in the past.”

“Well then, yes, we are good to go. I want you to have the stasis chamber prepped and ready to receive its cargo for oh eight hundred in the morning to transport her to our Manehattan lab”

“Yes sir it will be prepped and ready.”

“Good, tomorrow we finally begin Project Infiltrator,” The Colonel said with a dark smile on his face.

Chapter 1: Awakening

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Fallout Equestria: Influx

Chapter 1: Awakening


“Is it going according to plan?” A strong commanding voice asked.

“She, but yes Colonel. I have implanted her brain into I-01’s skull and decided to use both the Chimera grown heart and lungs since we know they are both undamaged,” Replied a braytish accented female voice, sounding annoyed about her superior’s inability to see their project for being more than a mere thing.

“It’s looking rather well, should the heart be beating right now?”

“Yes sir, once we extracted her brain from her head, we only had a few minutes to get it into the skull of I-01 and connected to the circulatory system. Thankfully, everything went off without a hitch, and the heart and lungs are working fine to keep the brain alive.”

“Good, well then, keep me posted. I want to know how everything is progressing.”

There was the sound of a door closing before the doctor sighed.

“She, colonel, despite the fact she’s going to be more machine than pony, she is still a female and will still be alive.”

XXXXX

“How is it coming doctor?”

“SHE, sir, is coming along swimmingly,” Growled the braytish mare.

“When will it be ready?” He asked, ignoring the doctor’s frustration.

“She’ll be ready for her trials in the next month. We still have plenty of slight modifications to make regarding her chest and cranium.”

“Modifications?”

“Zebras are very strong melee and unarmed combatants and if our latest reports into some of their abilities are to be believed, they can break solid rock with their hooves. So, we are increasing her mechanical skeleton’s durability with titanium. Especially around her chest and head, since they will be protecting her brain and heart.”

“Very well doctor...” He trailed off as he looked over at the mechanical skeleton. “Are its eyes supposed to be glowing red?”

“What?” The doctor cried out in surprise. “Oh bollocks.”

XXXXX

“What do you mean you’re moving her?” Dr Pear asked in outrage.

“Project Infiltrator has been compromised, doctor. Pinkie Pie has got it into her head that some of the ministries are trying to sell out to the Zebras or are hiding something. Which of course we are. She has gone off the rails much harder than usual. She is currently digging through all MoA archives and using all kinds of backdoor access codes to get into restricted areas. Infiltrator is on the very secure archives and she’ll discover it eventually if nothing distracts her. When she does, we do not want her to find I-01, nor us.”

“We can’t move her just yet.”

“I can only give you twenty four hours before we have no choice but to move it.”

“That should be enough time for me to finish what I need to do right now. But where are we moving the project to?”

“Back to Las Pegasus.”

“For the love of Celestia.”

“Sorry doctor.”

“Fuck off! You’re not sorry. You just want results. I can’t rush this; this is damn delicate work. Normally, it’ll take a day or two for the application of her living flesh but you’ve forced me to rush here.”

“Will you be able to apply the skin before we move it?”

“Yes sir, I’ll have to work throughout the night but it’ll be done.”

“Those eyes are glowing again.”

“What, oh for fuck sake.”

XXXXX

“...having to move you my flank. They just want to keep you to themselves and use you like an expendable thing. They want to make fully mechanical versions of you now. I wanted to make the perfect infiltrator but I never wanted to make a fucking army of machines like this. I wish I never accepted this position but I can’t stop now. I need to finish you before we move.”

The doctor sighed with a heavy heart. “I hope you’ll forgive us when the war is over Crystal.”

A ringing sound followed by vibrating interrupted the doctor. She sighed as she levitated a mobile phone out of her lab coat pocket and answered it.

“Dr Pear here... What, Manehattan General? Are you insane we can’t... Stasis pods? But sir civilians will see... You mean the private ward, but again civilians will... Shit, ok sir. She’ll have her flesh graphed to her endoskeleton in time for the move.”

The doctor sighed as she hung up her phone and approached a console. “Stupid, this is so stupid. Now they’re saying Pinkie is surprise raiding MoA R&D labs. This is insane. This has pushed my timetable up. Computer, initiate flesh application.”

“At least you’ll still be alive despite being more machine inside. I can hear your heart beating even with the gentle beep from the heart monitor on your chest plate. I hope when they finally get the combat training chips and reprogram your mind, you’ll remember you’re alive. Don’t worry, we’ll be making a copy of your original mind so we can give it back when the war is over. I made damn sure they wouldn’t kill you for real by doing that.”

“Four hours until the procedure is done, and we can move you to stasis in Manehattan General before the train ride back to Las Pegasus. It’s a damn good job I know what I’m doing here and... oh for Celestia’s sake, why won’t you stay offline?”

XXXXX

“Attention all ponies with Stable passes. Please report to your assigned Stables immediately. This is not a drill. Repeat...”

“No, not now. We can’t abandon her here like this!” Dr Pear cried as the colonel began to drag her away.

“There is no time anymore, doctor. The war is over and so is Equestria. I just got word that a Pink Cloud bomb had gone off inside of Canterlot’s shield. The princesses are dead. We are on our own now. We are the future of equine kind now. It’s up to us, now come on.”

“But sir, she could come with us.”

“It’s just a machine, Pear Shape. Now come on.”

“But sir, we can’t leave her to die here.”

“It’s already dead, remember? Now move.”

“But sir...”

XXXXX

“Warning, insufficient power to stasis chamber, repeat, insufficient power to stasis chamber.”

“Initiating emergency wake up procedure.”

I groaned to myself as I started to wake up. I could hear voices talking but couldn’t make them out clearly with my sleep addled brain waking itself up. There is a hiss and a mechanical grinding noise as something in front of me moves which then allowed a breeze to flow in and across me. Suddenly, my nose is assaulted with the most disgusting smell I’ve ever smelt. I wish I knew what it is, so I could describe it, but it’s the foulest smell I’ve ever had the misfortune to smell in my entire life. It certainly woke me up. My eyes flew open, and I found myself to be inside a hospital ward, surrounded by other pod like devices. I remember seeing something like these in a ward I passed when the nurses wheeled me back to my room after one of my operations, though I never asked what they were. However, I didn’t recognise the grimy walls or the ward I found myself in.

“Where am I?” I asked out loud to myself as I shakily pulled myself out of my pod and landed with a thud on the floor. Groaning to myself, I tried to get my unresponsive limbs to work. It was like I haven’t moved them in like forever, and they were taking a minute to catch up with my brain’s commands.

“Ow…” I moaned as I slowly pulled myself up off the floor and onto my hooves, only to land flat on my face. I blinked in surprise as my ears were swivelling around, trying to pick up any other noise, but no matter where my ears twisted to, all I could hear is silence. “What’s going on?” I asked myself with a shaky voice that I didn’t recognise but with the sense of fear creeping over me, I didn’t think about it.

My limbs felt heavy as I began to walk around the room, and I looked into each pod that I passed. Growing more confused by the second, I could see rust, dust and other grime covering every surface, making the place look centuries old and in disrepair. I didn’t know what had happened but my gut was telling me something really bad happened. I came to a pod that had a large crack in the glass cover but what may be inside is hidden by a thick layer of dust. Gently using my green overall covered foreleg to clear away the dust, I immediately jumped back and let out a scream of horror. My scream echoing throughout the building only made it feel far creepier and scarier than it already was.

A half decomposed pony lay in the pod. I’ve seen stuff like this before only in movies, but they didn’t look as horrifyingly disgusting as this. It looked like the pony was melting with how its body was peeling off the bone. I don’t know how long it would take for a body to completely decompose, but this looks like it’s been here a while. Sick to my stomach, I charged out the open door to get away from the horror and the smell. Standing outside the door, I panted and screamed out my horror at what I saw again. I only just woke up and had been treated to the sight of something I would only see in my nightmares. Definitely not something I want to wake up to.

Taking in some deep breaths, I composed myself and looked around. I found myself in a long hospital corridor that looked like someone did the Running of the Leaves in here. Everything was a shambles. Tables, beds, chairs, you name it were scattered all over the place, and the tiled floor had many of its tiles missing or broken, while also being covered in piles of rubbish. The hallway is dark and there seemed to be only a hoofful of lights working, but most importantly, there wasn’t a single pony anywhere in sight and the silence. I couldn’t hear a single thing, which added to the creepy feeling. I lived most of my life in and out of a hospital so I am very aware of the sounds of a hospital. The moans of patients, the many conversations blending together, the beeps and bops of machinery and etc. There was nothing, just the deafening silence.

“Where the hell is everypony?” I asked with my growing sense of fear making me start to shiver.

"Anypony here?" I shouted as loud as I could. My shout just echoed throughout the empty hospital without a single reply or sound. I'm truly alone here. This gave me more reason to be scared.

I looked up and down the corridor that I was in, trying to get a sense of direction, and noticed a sign half hanging from the ceiling above my head. I craned my neck to get a better look at the sign, and saw that it had a grimy white arrow pointing at the door behind me. I moved around a little to better see the sign from the side, and gasped in shock at what the sign was pointing at.

“Stasis Ward?” I cried out in shock. It’s clear now. I hadn’t been my hospital room before I fell asleep, and somehow, I wound up in stasis. I have heard of stasis before. Stasis is a form of suspended animation that preserves the body outside of time, preventing it from aging or degrading any further until it is released. I don’t understand the magical mechanics but I get the gist. Wait a minute! If I’ve been put into stasis, how long have I been asleep for?

I didn’t know how long I’d slept for in stasis and the idea that I’ve slept throughout the war and Celestia only knows how long into the future scared me to my core, making my already fast beating heart thump harder with my growing anxiety. I didn’t want to stay here any longer, with my fear induced brain telling me to run; I bolted as fast as I could over the rubbish strewn floor to the nearest door. I could see with a lot of light shining through it.

Bursting through the door, I found myself in a large reception hall. Behind the large row of desks at the back of the room, I saw writing. However, before I could read it, my hooves caught in a pile of mess and I fell hard onto my chin. I cried out in pain as the fall wound up with me biting my tongue. I whimpered and cried in dismay as I lay panting on the floor, gathering my breath. That was of course until I saw what I had fallen over and it wasn’t alone. My eyes bulged out of my skull in absolute horror at what lay around me. The entire reception was full of blackened skeletons with tatters of clothing still clinging to them. There had to be hundreds of them all piled up in here. I screamed my lungs out, jumped to my hooves and charged to the wall of glass that was the front entrance to the hospital. I dived out of the broken glass doors and skidded to a stop as I behold the city around me and just froze.

Everything was destroyed.

I stood ramrod stiff as my entire body locked up as I gazed fearfully at the jagged and crumbling buildings around me. I didn’t recognise anything. The architecture of the buildings still standing despite being wrecked is completely different to Las Pegasus, and the cold air again is a reminder that I’m not where I fell asleep. Las Pegasus was never cold even in winter but here it was freezing. Slowly, I regained control of my legs and turned around to face the hospital I came out of and,my mouth fell agape when I finally discovered where I was now.

“MANEHATTAN?!” I screamed in complete shock. “HOW DID I GET HERE?”

This is insane. It makes no sense. I’m in Manehattan. A city on the east coast of Equestria. But that’s impossible, how could I have gotten here? I shook my head. The number of questions to my current situation and to what happened here just kept growing, and it was making my head hurt. I sat down and started to weep from all the stress and confusion.

I don’t know how long I cried for, but the sound of crumbling brick and mortar made me stop and get to my hooves. I looked around frantically for the source of the noise and stopped as I looked up at the ruined tower of the hospital. It was leaning precariously towards me, and with every crack and groan of the old brick and steel, it leaned even further forward. It didn’t need to take genius to know what was going to happen so I turned tail and ran as fast as my legs could carry me up the rubble strewn road. I jumped over holes and cracks in the road and weaved between the many abandoned chariots as I ran.

“This has to be a nightmare,” I cried when there was a sudden bang and then a cascade of wrenching metal and crumbling brick filled the air.

There was an almighty crash as the building kissed the pavement. I didn’t dare look back as the ground shook violently, causing small fissures to open in the road, and one of my hooves caught in one of the newly opened cracks causing me to fall hard onto my chest and I cried out in pain as my body, carried by its momentum, scrapped along the road, rolling over onto my side and came to rest as I skidded to a stop after crashing into a bus. I whimpered and moaned in pain as I felt numerous scrapes on my hide but again, felt utter confusion as I didn’t break a bone. A fall like that would have shattered my sternum but it felt fine. My only complaint from that fall is the scrapes I got. I then noticed my heart beat. Despite its speed, the rhythm is perfectly normal. After all the running I’ve done since I woke up my heart, would have felt like it was about to give out on me before I fell asleep but no it feels fine, it’s never felt fine. What happened to me?

No matter what I could think of, I couldn’t explain my new found health. It honestly felt fantastic to feel like this. My chest hurt from the burn of my lungs trying to gather oxygen and my heart thundered in my chest, but I didn’t feel like I was about to drop dead like I’ve felt like before when I’ve exerted myself in the past. I felt a small amount of joy that I could experience a healthy life now, but that pleasurable feeling was dulled by all the destruction and death I could see all around me.

There was even more death outside the now collapsed hospital and it made me feel sick to my stomach to see all these blacken skeletons. What made it worse was also how many foal skeletons I could see. What the hell happened here? I couldn’t even begin to think of what happened, but I know for certain I’ll find out eventually.

My ears perked up as I began to pick up the sound of crashing water somewhere up ahead. I pulled myself back up to my hooves and weaved around the bus and stared ahead as the lines of destroyed buildings gave way to an endless green horizon. I walked for about ten minutes until I came to a rusty guard rail overlooking a rocky sea wall. What I can see is both beautiful and horrifying. A green tinted ocean laps at the sea wall calmly, but the rolling dark grey clouds gave the impression that a huge storm is on its way. I’ve never seen such a scene before in my life.

Lights caught my attention to my right and I turned to look and found a sight that gave me hope that there is still life in this city. I could see a small island not too far from the Manehattan shore and I could see a long bridge connecting the island to the city. As I gave my full attention to the island I began to see other things such as guard towers and ponies in those towers manning huge guns and pointing them out over the bridge. I immediately didn’t want go anywhere near that island nor those ponies with guns. I turned around and began to walk along the sea wall away from the island.

I must have walked for about an hour before my progress was halted, as I came across a wall that had metal spikes sticking out the top of the wall to prevent anypony from climbing over it. The wall was pretty much intact leaving barely any damage for me to look through. I also noticed by now the sky was darkening and this made the dead city feel even scarier as the deep shadows everywhere only grew larger and more ominous. I followed the wall around until I came to a large iron gate, which unfortunately is chained up tight. I am able to see through the bars in the gate and found myself looking into the Gold Star Line’s Manehattan Harbour; I could see the sign on a building in the distance. My jaw dropped when I saw the giant great white ship sitting in her berth. The RMS Celestia.

Well, I now have a vague time line now. I saw the news coverage when the RMS Celestia was announced and then the ceremony when the first piece of the ship was laid. Princess Luna attended in the place of her sister that the ship was named after, and hammered in the first rivet. I found it funny watching her on the TV since she looked uncomfortable doing something in the name of her sister. It was also kinda sad since after the assassination attempted on Princess Celestia, she attended public appearances less and less until we barely ever saw her. So, if the Celestia had just been started before I fell asleep and now since she is complete I would estimate I’ve been asleep for over five years. FIVE YEARS! No, maybe more considering the state of the ship. She looks extremely rusty and grimy and the fact she has sunk in her berth. She was sitting too deep in the water to be floating. Further observation of the ship also shows that her aft mast has collapsed and fallen over her starboard side and into a dockside warehouse. The bow mast looked to be leaning a little too far back, and the steel cables meant to keep the mast in place looked to be straining heavily to hold the mast from falling back. I don’t think they can last much longer. With the state of the ship I am going to now say more like ten years. Ten or more years, oh Celestia my mother must be beside herself in worry about me or... Oh goddesses, she must think I’m dead. Oh, oh mummy. I need to get home.

Something flashed in the corner of my vision. It looked like an exclamation mark. I turned my head to my right where I saw it flash and looked around trying to find it. What was that? Suddenly a heavy weight slammed into the gate causing me to stumble backwards slightly.

“What the hell?” I shrieked out in surprise from the sudden impact. What I saw lying in a broken heap on the floor made the air in my lungs catch in my throat in fright. What I can see can only be described as a zombie, a real life zombie. A walking corpse. This is impossible, this should not exist, it can’t, and it makes no sense. Trying to make sense of what I am seeing ,I could only think of old horror movies where the dead were reanimated by spells gone wrong or from viruses but all that stuff was make believe but here right now I can see a real zombie and it looked hungry. The monster pulled itself back up to its broken hooves and opened its lipless mouth and let out a loud hiss like cry as it charged at the gate again and began to push against it as it tried to get to me. Oh my goddesses this is sickening and disturbing. My eyes widened as I noticed more coming towards the first. There had to be hundreds of them and they were all coming for me. I don’t wanna be eaten. Seeing an army of the living dead I did the only thing a sane filly would do in this situation. Scream and run like hell in the opposite direction.

I ran for as long as my lungs could gather oxygen. I stopped, panting heavily as I sat down on the cold cracked concrete of what looked to be a high street full of shops. I clutched at my chest as my lungs burned for air and my heart thundered. I sat and rested until my chest no longer hurt and I was breathing at a more normal rate again. So much stress can’t be good for me. I’m going to need to find some shelter soon; it’s getting really dark now. I started up the street. Maybe I can find a news agent so I can find out what the heck happened to this city and why it’s deserted and filled with the living dead.

This street is an absolute mess. Just like the rest of the city. Every window is either boarded up or broken. Some of the buildings have collapsed internally, leaving a shell behind. My stomach growled with hunger as I trudged up the road. Wow, I didn’t realise how hungry I was with all this running for my life. I hope I can find an intact shop that sells food. I walked for at least another five minutes before I finally found what I was looking for. A news agent where I could find a newspaper so I can find out what happened.

I pushed open the half broken door and stepped into the shop, half expecting to greet the shopkeeper but of course like the city, the small store is deserted. I frowned as I walked through the aisles, looking for the newspapers. The shelves were pretty much devoid of anything edible and what was left was no good. Grumbling to myself about the lack of food, I walked up to the counter and found a stack of mushy pulp that had once been a stack of papers. I didn’t give up on finding a news paper as I climbed over the counter and jumped down behind it. I smiled when I saw a box sitting on a shelf below the counter marked with the symbol of the equestrian news. I pulled the box out and opened it. Inside, I found a stack of old yellowed newspapers which thankfully were intact but discoloured from age. The headline of the paper made my jaw drop to the floor as it told me what happened in one single word.

“ARMAGEDDON”

It can’t be, they can’t have, can they?

“Armageddon, Equestria launches WMDs in retaliation to Zebrica’s launch of their Balefire Bomb arsenal...”

So the war is over and both sides lost. No wonder this whole city is a wreck and... Oh my goddesses. It’s not just here, it’s the whole country and that means... Oh Celestia no, my mother! I then saw the date on the paper and that just confirmed my worst fears. The paper is dated five years after I fell asleep which means my mother is most likely dead, since we didn’t get a place in a Stable. Oh mother, I never got to say good bye. I couldn’t help the tears that fell from my eyes as I broke down again. I’ve lost so much, I can’t handle this.

“Well, well, well what do we have here?” A sinister male voice said from behind me. I shrieked out in surprise and spun around to see two stallions standing in the doorway wearing what looked to be makeshift suits of armour made from cobbled together rubbish.

“A fine young zebra cunt that’s what,” The first stallion’s companion answered with a dark lustful grin.

“I’m not a zebra,” I cried out as I got to my hooves.

“Heh, whatever you say bitch, you still got a fine ass,” The second one said as the pair of them walked closer towards me. I didn’t like how the two of them were looking at me and I backed myself up until my rump hit the wall behind me.

“Nowhere to run little bitch,” The first one said as he opened the counter door.

“Stay away from me!” I shouted as I jumped over the counter and made a break for the door. The second stallion was quick to get in my way and forced me to grind to a halt inches from his yellow tooth smile. I saw the exclamation mark flash in my vision again and then suddenly I felt a weight on my back and a pair of forelegs tightly hugged around my waist. I let out a cry of surprise and then felt something hard, warm and wet poke at my flanks as the stallion who had mounted me started to gyrate his hips. Oh Celestia No! “Get off of me!” I screamed and bucked hard. To my surprise I lifted him into the air as I pushed off with my hind legs. In his surprise, he let go of my waist and as he was still in the air, I kicked out with my hind legs and bucked him in the chest, sending him clear over the shelves to land against the counter in a heavy crash. I stared in shock at what I just did. I just threw a fully grown stallion off my back like he was nothing and then sent him clear across the store with a single kick.

"Haha, you just got your ass hoofed to ya by a mare Billy," The second stallion laughed in the doorway.

"Oh shut up," Billy groaned as he climbed over the counter in pain.

The stallion blocking the door continued to laugh but kept enough control of himself that he craned his neck back and pulled a rather large knife from a tattered saddlebag on his back and held it with the blade pointing at me. I began to quake in fear as the stallion continued to giggle manically around his knife while still he blocked my escape.

"I'm gonna fuck you good for that bitch," Billy said as he slowly began to approach me from behind.

"No please" I begged as I looked around fearfully around, looking for any other way to escape. I quickly dashed down an aisle to get some distance from the two bad stallions.

"Stay in the door, don't let her escape," Billy growled.

I don't believe this, what happened to these ponies? Ponies never used to be this dark.

"There you are."

I screamed and began to charge up the aisle and away from Billy. I rounded a corner and found myself running straight at the other stallion. In my panic I poured on the speed and just kept running. I could see the stallion grinning as he blocked the door but his grin began to fade the closer I got while still running at full pelt.

"She ain't stopping, oh shit."

He quickly dove out the way as I charged through the door. My vision blurred as tears threatened to blind me as I ran for my life. Why me?

"You fucking coward Crowbar," I heard Billy yell.

"Dude, she threw you off her like you were nothing, I ain't gonna let her bowl me over"

I ran as fast as I could into the street to get away from my attackers. I could barely see with how my teary eyes blurred my vision and then I saw the exclamation mark flash again. I looked in the direction I saw it flash but that momentary distraction stopped me from seeing the bus in front of me. I looked forward again just in time to see the large rusty steel vehicle. Oh no. I let out a scream of pain as I collided head first into the bus and staggered backwards. My head hurt badly, and my vision began to swim.

"Haha she ran straight into a bus," Crowbar laughed as the two stallions casually approached me.

I moaned as I turned around. I could barely stay on my hooves with how badly everything was swirling around. I felt so dizzy.

"Let's help her relax," Billy said as he pulled a large plank of wood off his back, covered in nails.

"Pl...please," I begged while I spread my legs to keep me up.

"Nighty night," Billy said and swung his nail board.

I screamed in agony as I felt the nails dig into my cheek but then felt the heavy impact of the wood against my head and everything went black.

XXXXX

The zebra mare collapsed to the floor unmoving as she took a nailboard full force against the side of the head. To Billy's surprise his weapon exploded into splinters along with his teeth being rattled and he dropped the now useless piece of wood.

"You really need to take better care of your shit," Crowbar laughed.

"Fuck you, argh damn, that felt like I hit a brick wall," Billy groaned as he worked his jaw.

Crowbar continued to laugh at his friend's expense as the two vile stallions approached the unconscious mare.

Down the street just out of sight of the two raiders a beige pony with a brown mane dressed in bloodied doctor scrubs watched the scene while hiding behind a rusty red mailbox. "That poor mare." Suddenly to his surprise he watched as the downed mare picked herself back up like nothing happened.

"What the fuck?" Billy yelped.

"She should be out cold after a hit like that"

The zebra mare turned around to face her attackers. Her once baby blue eyes had taken on a now threatening red.

"Self defence protocol initiated, engaging hostile targets," She spoke in a monotone emotionless electronic voice.

The two stallions blinked in confusion as the mare showed no signs of the concussion she should have taken from the two heavy impacts to her head and she calmly approached the two males with her red eyes boring into them. Crowbar got over his surprise first and grinned as he took hold of his knife again.

"Ya wanna go bitch, alright then, come on," He mumbled around the grip of his knife as he went in to slash at the mare. The zebra tilted her head to regard him and with a quick fluid flick of her foreleg she blocked the strike. She pushed up with her other foreleg to free it from supporting her weight while still holding the blade back with her other foreleg she thrust her free hoof out with lightening speed at the stallion's exposed chest. Her hoof connected with his chest and a loud crack reverberated throughout the street as her hoof broke his sternum and pushed into his chest. Crowbar let out a gasp before collapsing, dead. Her strike had pushed his broken sternum against his heart with enough force to stop it.

Billy gasped in shock as he watched his lifelong friend die from just a single punch to his chest. His mouth fell agape when he saw just how deeply the mare's hoof had sunk into his chest when she pulled it out of the hole she made. Her hoof had sunk at least an inch or two into his friend's chest.

"You... you killed my best friend... you fucking bitch!" Billy yelled in rage as he quickly dug out a ten millimetre pistol.

The zebra calmly turned to face him, not seeming to even notice the gun now pointed at her and began to approach him.

"Die" Billy yelled over the mouth grip and fired three rounds at the mare. Three loud bangs echoed down the street, which were then followed by three dings.

Billy dropped his gun in complete terror as the red eyed mare continued to approach him despite being shot in the head three times. The bullets themselves had bounced out of the holes they dug into her forehead.

"What are you?" He cried out in panic as he began to walk backwards.

The zebra didn't speak; she kept her gaze locked on him as she continued her approach. Suddenly, without warning, the mare jumped forward, landed on one forehoof then twisted her body around, spinning on her hoof until she had her back to the stallion. He had just enough time to let out a cry for help before two hindhooves found themselves slamming into his head. The double hoof kick to his snout broke his jaw and nose, sending shards of bone into his brain but the strength of the strike also threw his head back hard enough to break his neck. Billy was dead before he hit the floor.

"Holy shit," The wasteland doctor gasped as he watched the mare defeat two stallions with a single blow each. He was also curious about this mare, something didn't seem right about her since she had collapsed from two hits to the head but then fought two stallions like nothing happened and also got shot in the head. Part of his mind was telling him to run before she killed him too but the injuries she had taken needed treating, and the good doctor in him couldn't allow him to run to leave this mare to likely get an infection in the deep gashes in her left cheek where the nails had dug into her from the nailboard. He slowly crawled out from behind the mailbox, and began to approach the mare slowly.

The mare raised her head as if sensing something and turned to face the approaching stallion. After a moment of regarding him she began to approach him. The doctor noticed that the mare had seen him and stopped. He sat on his rump and held his forehooves up to show he was unarmed.

"I mean you no harm," He spoke as confidently as possible as the red eyed zebra came within inches of him.

He cringed at the sight of the gashes in her cheek and he was sure he could see some teeth through one of the holes in her cheek. The mare moved her head closer as she stared at him and he did his best to not break eye contact. After what felt like forever and a day the mare pulled back from him.

"Self defence protocol disengaged," She said in the same lifeless tone as before and then her red eyes faded back to their baby blue colour before rolling into the back of her head as she collapsed.

"Oh shit, are you alright?" The doctor cried out in surprise as the mare fell. Seeing that she was unresponsive he attempted to pick her up only to find he couldn't budge her. "Goddesses you weigh a ton," He groaned before giving up trying to move her. "Brutus, get your fat ass out here!" He yelled out.

A large black spotted Brahmin trotted out from behind the corner and approached his master. "You called sir," The left head spoke in a calm voice.

"We need to get her to my clinic now, I can't lift her."

The two headed cow nodded, and allowed the doctor to assemble his makeshift stretcher he had in the Brahmin's large bag and with the help of the mutated cow, pulled the unconscious mare onto the stretcher. The doctor made sure his patient was secure, before he tied two ropes from the Brahmin's saddle to the stretcher and with the cow’s strength began to haul the mare towards his clinic.

XXXXX

I smiled to myself as I snuggled close to my mother's soft pink sparkling fur. Despite all my pain and suffering from my illnesses I could always find comfort with my mother. She bent her head down and gently licked the sour on my cheek, her soft tongue calming the burn from it.

"Sweetie you got to be more careful, you know you are more fragile than most other fillies and colts" She spoke softly.

"I know mum but it was a really fun game," I chirped.

She giggled softly, her sweet voice making me smile happily. "Oh, I know darling, but you know how rough some of those colts can be."

I cooed happily as I snuggled close to my mother's side. She shifted away from me after a few minutes and I looked up in confusion. I blinked in confusion to see the sparkle from my mother's crystal coat had faded away leaving her looking dull and sad. I then realised I am fully grown again and that I'm dreaming. My fondest dreams are mostly of me as a carefree filly.

"You, you have to go away for a while sweetheart," My mother said as tears built up in her eyes.

"What, but mummy I don't want to leave," I whimpered.

"I know you don't sweetie but you have a lot to do now and Equestria needs you," She said breaking down as the door to our house exploded as two ponies dressed in black outfits with face wraps stormed into the house and seized me. As soon as they grabbed me the entire house morphed into a clean steel grey corridor and I found myself strapped to a gurney being pushed along by the two stallions. We drew near a set of double doors which as we got close to them opened and a blinding light filled the hall but a silhouette of a large stallion stood in the middle. I felt a shiver run down my spine as the shadowed stallion smiled.

"Excellent timing, we are ready to extract her brain," He said in a ghostly voice as everything faded to black as I felt myself being pulled away from the land of nod.

I woke up with a start from the strange dream I had which was now starting to fade from my memory but the voice of that shadowed stallion still lingered making me shiver. What was all that about? I never had a dream like that before. I went to move a foreleg so I could rub my forehead since I can feel something pressing on it and froze when I found myself unable to move it. I tried to move my over limbs and found myself completely bound to whatever I'm lay on and incapable of any movement apart from useless wriggling.

"Help!" I screamed out in fright.

"Ah, you're awake" Came a soft male voice from my right. I tried to turn my head but found I couldn't move it like the rest of me though I was able to see him with my eye. The beige stallion walked up to the table or whatever I'm on and sat down. He didn't look threatening and his soft voice didn't give any malicious intent.

"Help me, I can't move," I whimpered.

"I'm not going to take the chance until I know you are safe to release. You did kill two stallions with one hit each before collapsing again. Not to mention you are not even a pony, I don't know what you are," He told me as he looked over my prone body.


"I, what?" I shrieked. "That's impossible I..." I remembered I was hit by a nailboard and was knocked out. "I was unconscious, I couldn't have done anything"

He stared at me for a while before speaking again. "You're eyes were red at the time but they are blue now, but I suppose you weren't in control either. Who are you?" He asked.

The bit about me having red eyes confused me but I let it pass. "My name is Crystal Éclair. I'm a Crystal Pony from Las Pegasus," I told him truthfully.

He tilted his head and raised an eyebrow at my answer. "Crystal?" He asked. I nodded my head with how much the strap on my head would allow me. "You look more like a Zebra than a Crystal Pony but you aren’t all Zebra either," He told me, looking over my body to which I began to feel strange sensations in multiple areas on my body like a cool breeze blowing over an uneven surface.

"What, what are you talking about?" I cried in confusion.

He simply reached up to the table and flicked his hoof against something and the strap holding my head became slack and he gently pulled it off my head.

"Have a look," He told me.

I weakly lifted my head and looked at myself. For the first time since I woke up in the hospital, I took the time to actually see myself and finally understood why everypony was calling me a Zebra. My once dull pink coat and yellow tail had changed to the white and grey stripes of a Zebra. I don't understand; how did this happen to me? What did this to me? But then I saw the gaping holes cut into my body; there were like several holes dug into my flesh on my chest, belly and legs and disturbingly, they were not bleeding but it was what lay within those holes that made me scream.

"What the hell has happened to me?" I screamed as I struggled against my bonds. I could hear and see the mechanical, skeletal like limbs moving and straining with me. It's like it is my body. I can feel everything trying to move. What's happened to me?

"Do you still believe you are a Crystal Pony?" He asked me.

I looked at him with tears now streaming from my eyes. "CELESTIA YES!" I cried. "I was born in the Crystal Empire, moved to Las Pegasus with my mother and father and lived there until I was twenty six," I wailed.

He frowned as he looked sympathetic. "I believe you. No machine can emulate that much raw emotion. I could see it all in your eyes. I don't know who did this to you but I can certainly tell you what they have done," He said as he began to undo the straps holding me down. I just lay there and cried, letting all my anguish out as he freed me. I wept until I had no more tears. The pony was patient with me as he let me calm down. I slowly hauled myself up so I'm sitting upright on the table and looked at the bloodstained pony. My eyes widened at the blood, and he followed my gaze.

"Oh, don't mind the blood," He said dismissively. "It comes with the job of being a healer."

I nodded and looked back down at my holed body and whimpered. "Why am I all cut up?" I asked looking at a large hole cut into my chest to reveal a steel breast plate with a green screen which I recognised as a heart monitor.

"I can explain that," The doctor said looking sheepish. "I might have got a little carried away.”

"What did you do?" I cried.

"Let me explain... Um, right. You collapsed after you killed the two stallions and I noticed that you had several wounds on your body so I brought you here to my clinic to treat you since I'm a doctor and all. Anyway, when I was examining your gashed cheek, I noticed a metallic gleam so I thought one of the nails from that nailboard had been pushed in much deeper so I had to cut you more to get at it, but as I did, I discovered it wasn't a nail but your skull. I got curious and when attending to your chest which was pretty scraped, I discovered metal under your skin there too, and one thing led to another and I had revealed you entire skeleton to be mechanical. It is rather remarkable since you have living tissue on top of a robotic body and also this thing," He explained with an excited tone. This just horrified me, to know that I've somehow been turned into a machine and not only that into a different species all together. The doctor pulled a pink diamond that is set into a blue steel ring out from his scrub's pocket and then held it in his hoof to show me. "I had to pry this out your chest to stop your body from reforming while I examined you."

"You took that out of me?" I yelped and looked at my exposed chest and sure enough there is a circular indentation where something did sit.

"Don't worry I'm going to put it back, since I know you aren't going to kill me."

I just blinked.

"Anyway, this is weird. It's a zebra made regeneration talisman and is used to heal injuries and illnesses and whatever, but this is the strange thing. When I was cutting you to examine you, a simple cut didn't prompt it to heal you, but cutting a sizeable chunk out of your flesh it would then regrow within seconds. I performed a magical scan on it, and this blue ring seems to be controlling the flow of power from the talisman. It suppresses its healing capabilities if the injury isn't major say, like a cut or a scrape then the ring forces the talisman to not heal the damage and since your flesh is alive it would heal on its own eventually."

This is all too much. I'm just a machine now is that it? Oh Celestia what happened to me?

"So I'm just a machine now, I'm not alive?" I asked with a fresh set of tears starting to build up.

He frowned for a moment. "Hold still," He said as he pushed the strange diamond into my chest and with a click I felt it settle in the groove. My eyes widened in surprise as I felt a wave of energy rush through me and then I felt a tingling in all the areas I had parts of my body cut away and in total shock I watched as the holds slowly closed until I was whole again.

"Incredible," The doctor said as he looked over my now healthy looking zebra body. "Oh and to answer your question about being alive. I can safely assure you that you ARE alive," He said with all the seriousness of a pony who was held in high authority. "I performed several medical scanning spells, and to my surprise I found that you have a living brain in your head although there is a small computer in there with it, and a set of lungs and a heart in your chest which are pumping blood and oxygen to your brain to keep it alive. Because you still have those you are very much alive.”

I let out a sigh of relief to know that I'm still in some way alive and not just a machine.

"Your mechanical body is also very unique, well to me it is. It seems like it was designed to emulate a living pony completely, because not only do you have your organic brain, heart and lungs but you also have synthetic organs. You have a synthetic stomach and intestinal tract, so you can still eat food like a normal pony but also I've discovered you can also eat metal and gems. You also seem to have a repair system built into your mechanical body similar to that of a Steel Ranger's armour so I believe that is why you can eat metal but also your power cells are very weak, won't last you for a week but its genius," He gushed. This pony seemed to know a lot about this. "Your body is designed to recharge itself from you eating food and gems on a regular basis. Whoever made you seemed to have designed you so you could blend in with the all organic ponies or zebras. I've never seen anything like you before, not even the ponies I've met from Stable 101 who are all big on cybernetic modification are anything like you. I learned a lot from those ponies and with how many cybernetic ponies I've met lately I'm glad I learned from them."

Well now I know why he knows so much about my mechanical parts. I have conflicting emotions right now. One part of me is sickened and horrified with what I've become while the other side is overjoyed that I'm still alive and healthy for once, and I suppose that side was winning as I couldn't help a small smile.

"Um thank you doctor for making sure that I'm ok, even though you cut me full of holes."

"No problem. I couldn't leave a helpless mare lying outside in the middle of the street like that."

I smiled a little brighter. He thankfully was like the doctors I used to know.

"Um, can you tell me what's happened please? When I was put into stasis none of this had happened, I mean the end of Equestria," I asked.

He frowned, and then recounted what he knew of the end of the war and Equestria itself. I listened and was horrified to know the whole country had been laid to waste along with Zebrica. I can't imagine how many ponies and zebras died that day. He went on to tell me that thousands survived in the Stables and that many did survive in the wasteland but then came the biggest shock since I found out I'm mostly machine. He told me it's been a hundred and ninety years, give or take a year or two since the bombs fell. That blew my original estimate out the water.

"A hundred and ninety years!" I screamed in complete shock and then I broke down for another round of crying, as that just confirmed that by now my mother is long dead.

"Hey what's the matter?"

"I thought I've been asleep for five or so years so there was a chance I could get home to my mum but now I know I have no chance of that since she'd have been dead for over a century," I cried. I feel like such a cry baby right now.

"I'm sorry," He said as he turned and trotted over to a locker and opened it. "So, what are you going to do now?" He asked as he rummaged about inside.

"I... I don't know," I answered. What am I to do now? I got no pony to go home to and no home to go back too. I'm totally alone out here and have nothing left. I looked down with a sigh and regarded my zebra body and I felt a surge of anger. There was something I could do. "Actually, I think I'd like to find out what happened to me."

"Oh and how are you going to do that?" He asked as he turned around, carrying a bungle on his back and trotted up to me.

"Well the last thing I remember before waking up here in Manehattan was going to sleep in my hospital room, in the Las Pegasus Fluttershy Hospital, so that's where I'll start."

"That's on the other side of the wasteland; there are a lot of dangers between here and there."

"Um, you wouldn't know a safe way back would you?"

"Actually, there is a train that still runs between the east and west. It's not entirely safe but, it’s quicker and safer than walking there. The train won't be here for another few days yet, but if finding out what happened to you is what you are going to do, then I'd suggest checking out the Ministry of Awesome hub here before the train arrives."

"Why the MoA hub?" I asked as he set the bundle on the table beside me.

"The Ministry of Awesome's insignia is etched onto your metal skeleton," He answered as he then patted the bundle. "Here, you might find these useful; you have a Stable-Tec Jumpsuit and a Pipbuck-3000 here. Dressing in this suit and wearing the pipbuck will help convince ponies you are a Stable-Dweller, and not just a random zebra. Most ponies still don't trust them much. They belonged to a Stable-Dweller who I was unfortunately unable to save. The pipbuck is a very useful tool and will help you greatly. Hmm, maybe I can directly integrate it into your system for easier control."

"What do you mean?" I asked as I slipped into the tight jumpsuit.

"I mean so you can control it with your mind as it'll be a part of your body with its direct link to your mechanical system. Your brain controls your body, and the automated systems will aid in your control, but you can still use it manually too."

"If you think it'll help me then sure."

"Ok, hold still," He said as he took a clean scalpel from a tray of tools and brought it to me left foreleg. I began to shiver as he brought the blade to me leg and then cut into me. I screamed in pain, and yanked my leg back as the small blade cut into my skin.

"That hurt," I cried.

"Remarkable, you can still feel pain," He then coughed. "Erm, well, I'm sorry I didn't mean to hurt you."

I held my foreleg as I watched blood seep from the cut. But after a few minutes, the pain subsided along with the blood flow. I've cut myself before from accidents, and they still hurt longer after I did them, but I can't feel this one at all right now.

"It doesn't hurt now, I can barely feel it."

He gently pressed the small cut, applying pressure and parting the wound until I let out a grunt as the pain returned.

"It seems you now have a high pain threshold. It's amazing she can still feel pain too."

I rolled my eyes as he spoke that last part quietly to himself.

"I can try again if you wish; I'll proceed slowly as to not overwhelm you"

I nodded and grit my teeth since I knew what to expect. He brought the blade to my flesh again and began to cut into my lower foreleg. I grit my teeth hard as my leg spiked in pain again as he cut a sizeable length, and using his magic, he pried the cut apart to expose the mechanical leg beneath. With the cut open, he brought the pipbuck over and opened the back panel connecting a wire to a port and then slipped the wire into the cut. I didn't watch, as watching him doing something inside an open wound like that was actually making me feel sick. Just feeling it in there was making me queasy. I felt a spark from my leg, and then my vision was awash with text until all that remained was a flashing line that read.

"Pipbuck system installed successfully."

"It worked!" I shrieked in surprise.

"Eyes Forward Sparkle acquired, initiating..." Another line said as it replaced the last and then I found a compass appear in the bottom left of my vision and a chart on the right with empty spaces below, but on top it had several bars with AP next to it. "Eyes Forward Sparkle installation complete. Thank you for choosing Stable-Tec."

"There, your pipbuck is online," The doctor said as he then fastened the device to my leg.

I cringed as the device squeezed my leg, and caused a slight rise in pain as it agitated the cut beneath it for a moment. "Thank you doctor," I groaned.

"Not a problem."

I gently pushed myself off the table and landed with a thud back on all four hooves.

"Oh and you weigh a hell of a lot by the way," The doctor whined from my heavy impact with the floor which caused the nearby shelves to rattle.

"Err, ok, um, thank you for helping me doctor."

"My pleasure, it's always good to help a pony in need... or in your case a bio-mechanoid zebra."

I smiled as I turned to leave.

"Oh wait here," He said getting my attention so I turned around to face him. He gave me a piece of paper with what looked like directions on them and then he gave me a pistol. It was a gun I recognised from some movies. A basic 9mm Pistol. "The directions are to the train station that'll take you back to Las Pegasus or as it's called today, New Pegasus, and the gun you will need for your protection. There is a lot out there that'll try to kill you, so be careful."

I nodded. "Thank you again. Good bye doctor."

"Take care, Crystal. Good luck."

I stopped and turned back to him with a sheepish grin. "Um, how do I get to the MoA hub?"

XXXXX

I looked around with more apprehension at the ruined city as I walked into the downtown district of Manehattan, where I would find Tenpony Tower. The doctor told me I'd find the MoA hub near by the tower. By now, it was the dead of night and to my surprise, a good portion of the streetlamps were working. I did notice several spark batteries connected to some of them as I passed. It's really odd and disturbing to see that this city still tried to live without ponies to maintain it. I came to an intersection and looked up at the rows of buildings ahead of me and saw one tower that still had lights on. The doctor had told me that Tenpony Tower is pretty much the only building still intact in this city and contained a pony settlement. I might be able to get some supplies while I'm there, that is if they let me in being a zebra and all. Ugh, I can see this becoming a problem in the future.

While I stared up at the tower in the distance I then noticed red bars appearing in my EFS compass along with the exclamation mark flashing above my AP metre. It was now I finally understood what the flashing exclamation mark is. It's a threat warning.

I quickly turned around and found a small group of ponies dressed similarly to the two stallions from earlier but in this group I could see mares along with them.

"Little Zebra, you killed two of my Raiders today. I can't have a cunt like you making us look bad," A large buff looking stallion said as he stepped forward. I gulped in fright and backed away as he advanced with his group behind him.

The large raider smiled darkly as he could read how scared I am with how wide my eyes are. "The bitch is scared. Awww," He taunted. He then unexpectedly stopped and looked up with his eyes growing wide. Against my better judgement I turned and looked as well only for my jaw to drop as I saw two balls of cackling green energy streaming right for us.

Chapter 2: Iron Horse of Speed

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Fallout Equestria: Influx

Chapter 2: Iron Horse of Speed


Green light bathed the area as the two hoofball sized balls of energy flew down from above towards us. My eyes could only see the crackling spheres. Everything else around me didn't matter, all that mattered was what's heading right for me. I turned my head back to the raider who had confronted me and without another word I did the only thing that came to mind which was to avoid the energy balls and that was to drop to my stomach, clutch my head in my hooves and scream in terror. Oddly enough with my eyes closed, my EFS was still visible and I could see my threat warning flashing even as my fur stood on end as the energy spheres flew over my prone body. I cringed and held my head harder when suddenly, my ears were assaulted by a blood curdling scream that abruptly stopped mid scream. The half scream was then followed by a wet squelching noise and splashes. I could see a green glow through my closed eyes and stupidly, I cracked an eye open to see what was causing the glow, and immediately regretted it because the glow belonged to the raider who was now dead. He had turned into a pile of goo, with his skeleton collapsed into a heap in the pile of sludge. I took a deep inhale of breath, ready to scream my lungs out at the horror before me when a shadow passed over my head and then four purple legs landed hard in front of me. Blinking in confusion at the new arrival, I removed my hooves from my head as I looked up to see this new arrival to the scene. A purple pegasus stallion stood in front of me with his back to me, his wings spread out to the fullest to make him look as big as possible and crackling on either side of him under his wings were two plasma rifles.

"Don't you assholes have anything better to do than to terrorise a defenceless mare?" He yelled angrily. "You better get the fuck out of here before I turn you all into slush puppies."

The remaining raiders looked at each other for a moment before they all turned tail and ran away. I suppose seeing their leader get liquefied was enough to scare them off. I remained on the floor as the raiders ran off. I myself am scared too, of this stallion who is wielding two powerful weapons. For all I know, he wants to hurt me himself. The stallion held his pose for a few moments longer before he relaxed, folding his wings to his sides and shifting his stance to a more casual stance. He turned around and bent down slightly.

"Hey, are you alright?" He asked sounding concerned.

I blinked and looked up at the purple stallion. He wore a worried look on his handsome face even with a few locks of his messy darker purple mane falling in front of his eyes.

I nodded weakly in response and he offered his hoof. I smiled softly and took his hoof and he helped me up to my hooves.

"Good thing I was in the area," He smiled smugly at me now that I am stood up.

Now that we were facing each other I could see he was wearing a battlesaddle designed to hold medium to large weapons and the two weapon holsters were taken up with MK1 Plasma Rifles. The two weapons however, looked ready to fall apart.

"Thank you for saving me, mister..." I paused as I didn't know the stallion's name.

He grinned and put a hoof to his chest smugly. "Tooty Fruity is the name but you can call me Fruity," He introduced himself with confidence.

I smiled at his attitude, it was certainly a welcome change from the grim nature of the last few ponies I've met today beside the doctor.

"Nice to meet you Fruity, my name is Crystal Éclair, though you can call me Crystal," I said, smiling.

He looked at me funny when I gave him my name.

"What?"

"Err, nothing, just an odd name for a zebra that's all," He said while he began to fiddle with his battlesaddle.

"Um, I suppose my parents wanted to be different with me," I suggested.

"Heh, fair enough..." He replied before groaning in annoyance. "C'mon you piece of shit," He whined as he pulled at a stubborn strap. As he pulled, the strap suddenly snapped. The sudden release made him lose his balance and he toppled over onto his side which I found quite funny, and couldn't help the small giggle that escaped my lips.

He groaned to himself as he picked himself up, fluffing his wings up in agitation. As he stood, his battlesaddle fell to the floor. "Stupid piece of junk," He growled at the saddle now on the floor.

"Why did you take it off?" I asked surprised.

"I used what they had left in saving you. Kinda pointless in keeping them now since finding Plasma Rifles to repair them with are next to impossible in this shit tip and repairing or buying new ones would cost me a leg and a wing," He answered with a sigh. "Literally," He added after a moment's pause.

"Oh, I'm sorry."

"Huh, don't be," He dismissed my apology. "Anyway, what is a pretty mare like you doing outside at this hour? It's dangerous and will get a whole lot worse soon."

"Um, you don't mind that I'm a zebra?" I asked.

"Can we talk about this later, like when we are safe inside somewhere?" He asked looking up at the darkening sky nervously.

"Um, sure, I was just heading to Tenpony Tower before I go to the MoA Hub here," I said, answering his previous question.

"Ok good, I know how to get to Tenpony, follow me and please keep up, we don't have much time bef-" He was cut off when a loud shriek rang throughout the streets.

"What was that?" I asked looking around fearfully.

"Oh no, we only have a few minutes before they come out. C'mon Crystal move that ass," He urged as he turned and began to run down the street towards a rusty iron staircase leading up to the overpass. I didn't have to be told twice and ran after him with my growing sense of fear.

We began to thunder up the stairs. Well, I thundered, Fruity just flew up, and we came out onto a dual lane overpass for Manehattan's train network. We ground to a halt as in the distance we saw the last bits of light fade, night taking completely over the day now and plunging everything into darkness and then we saw the streams. All around us we could see streams of things flying up into the sky. It was like something out of a horror movie.

"Oh shit, this way now, RUN!" He cried and began to run down the tracks towards the tower still lit up. There was then another loud high pitched screech and I let out a fearful cry and ran after him.

"What are those things?" I cried when I caught up to him. At least this mechanical body has some benefits.

"Since you're new out here, um, think of them as giant vampire fruit bats but instead of fruit juice they suck on pony juice," He yelled as we ran. I didn't like the sound of that.

As we ran, we dodged and weaved around chunks of rubble and rusted old heaps of what had once been the city's metro trains, jumping over holes and all the while the sounds of flapping leathery wings grew louder and louder.

"There, we have to get to that station," Fruity cried as he began to fly parallel with the floor.

Up ahead, we could see a train station bathed in light, the only source of light on this overpass. I grunted, feeling my heart beat hard and fast in my chest, the familiar burn seeping over me as I ran. The sense of fear making my pulse race and the anticipation of reaching our safe heaven blotted out most of what's around me. The bats were drawing in so close now that I couldn't ignore them as I focused on the station that was only a couple of hundred feet away but just felt like miles.

I heard a hiss close by, and then felt something slash my exposed flank. Crying out in pain, I kicked out with my hind legs. I felt one of my hooves strike something, which then crashed into something else. I hissed with pain as my working muscles agitated the wound. I know I don't have muscles anymore, but it still feels like I do though.

"Whoa, hey," I heard Fruity yell up ahead a little and looked up to see him just in time to see a giant bat miss him. "Hah, you gotta do better than that to get me you filthy flying rat."

He flipped around to avoid another bat but he ended up heading right for a large pole bent over the overpass while his attention was on the bats.

"Fruity look out!" I cried while jumping over another hole.

"Huh, OH SHIT!" He cried and without time to avoid the pole he crashed into it with his chest, his momentum causing him to spin around the pole a couple of times before he was roughly deposited onto the floor.

"Ow," He groaned as he quickly picked himself up.

"Are you alright?" I asked as I ran up to him.

"I'm fine, c'mon," He replied as he took off again.

I nodded and ran after him again just as there was a loud shriek from behind me, and then something impacted the ground where I was just moments ago.

We were now mere feet from the station and its lights of safety. "We're almost there!" Fruity shouted. "Yo, little light over here please!" He shouted towards the station.

I let out another pained cry as something slashed my leg this time. "Please," I cried. I saw a pony look out from a guard tower built onto the station before the guard looked to his left and then a spot light burst to life and bathed the tracks we are running on in a bright harsh light. I blinked rapidly as my vision had been blinded by the light, preventing me from being able to see where I'm going.

"Crystal watch..."

I cried out loudly as my forelegs collided with the lip of the platform and I slid on my chest and crashed into a concrete bench.

"Nevermind," Fruity said as he landed on the platform.

I looked up and out over the train line to see a flock of huge black, red winged bats cry out in agony from the intense light, before they scrambled away from the light along with white spots. Thankfully, the spots faded away as my eyes readjusted.

"What the heck are those?" I asked while ignoring the pain in my forelegs from my crash.

"Those, miss Zebra, are what we call Bloodwings," A gruff voice answered as a pony wearing tan coloured combat armour stepped out onto the station.

"Phew, nice going there Slick," Fruity said as he recovered from his flight.

"What are you doing here again Fruity, you've been kicked out twice, you know what will happen if you get kicked out again."

"He he, yea, I know but... this was an emergency."

"Ugh, yes I can see that, there is no way I'm gonna let you back out there with those bloodwings flying around out there..." He then looked at me, the guard pony's eyes narrowing slightly. "You know how ponies feel about zebra's right?" He asked looking back at the purple stallion.

"Oh c'mon dude she's fresh out of a stable, look," He whined waving a hoof at me.

The guard pony looked at me again and regarded my now slightly torn Stable-Jumpsuit. "Alright, wait here," He groaned as he walked over to the double doors at the back of the station and began to talk into an intercom mounted on the wall beside the door.

I sighed as I stood up. I could feel the gashes in my flank and leg gently oozing blood but thankfully it was nothing to worry about. Like I have to worry about bleeding to death, considering how much of me is synthetic.

"Hey, are you alright?" Fruity asked as he approached me.

"Um, yeah I'm good thank you and um, thank you for helping me. If it wasn't for you I think I'd probably get torn apart from those things," I shivered at the idea.

Fruity smiled a little smugly. "Don't mention it, can't expect a Stable-Dweller to know the dangers of the Wasteland."

"Alright you two, you can stay inside but..." He turned to look at Fruity. "You better stay the hell away from alcohol this time," He warned with an annoyed tone.

He smiled sheepishly. "Hehe, they're still sore about that?"

The guard facehoofed. "You screwed a mare in the mall level fountain."

"You what?" I cried out in shock surprise at this.

"Heh heh, it happened a long time ago, I've not touched a drop of booze since it happened."

"It was last month," The guard known as Slick sighed. "You better not drink any alcohol, you turn into one horny bastard when you get pissed, and I don't want to have to throw you to the Bloodwings. By all means fuck a mare in your assigned room but keep it inside the room," He sighed again and turned around "Follow me, I'll take you to your room."

We followed close behind the guard as we entered the tower and into safety. It felt good to be inside now, and not outside with those bats. That good feeling soon faded as we walked out into a large open space lined with shops and other services along the walls, and despite the late hour, there are still a good number of ponies walking around. It was good to see ponies that looked normal, but the disapproving stares that were being directed at me made me feel small. My ears wilted as some ponies gave me some rather angry glares.

"What is that bitch doing in here?" A rather large looking stallion who looked so ripped his muscles threaten to burst out his suit growled as he approached us.

"Stand down Biceps, she's alright," Slick moaned at the rather large pony.

"Why did you let her in?"

"Couldn't force her to stay out with the bloodwings and its clear she's just an innocent mare since she's fresh from a Stable. It wouldn't be right now back off."

"But she's a Zebra!"

"C'mon dude, it's been two hundred years since the war. We can't blame her for any of that can we?"

"Who asked you Dashite," The stallion yelled at Fruity which made him wilt and cower slightly from the big earth pony.

"Alright, Biceps, if you don't back off I'll have to call the guard. Do you want to suffer another trade ban for unlawful behaviour?"

The large stallion stopped and looked at the guard worriedly. "Fine, let the swine stay," He growled as he backed away and then walked off.

"Ugh, that guy is always a knob," Fruity whined quietly so the retreating mass of muscles couldn't hear him.

"A knob that brings in good business," The guard retorted as we turned and entered a lift.

The small lift felt a little cramped, and it was taking a long time to get to the residential floor. I suppose it's my fault, considering I weigh more than twice a standard pony would. After a few minutes, the lift reached its floor and we stepped out into a marbled floor corridor with equally elegant marble walls, and corner carvings to simulate Roamane columns.

"Wow," I muttered out loud as we began to trot down the corridor, past an intersection and then around a corner to a red wood door.

"For the time being, you can use this room. A guard will come along shortly and keep guard. I've been given orders to not let you out of the room until morning. If you require anything, ask the guard who'll be on duty when he arrives."

"Thank you sir," I said politely as me and Fruity entered the hotel room.

"Don't be thanking me Stripe, I don't trust your kind as much as Biceps does, but I'm under orders to put you up for now plus..." He sighed. "I'm not a monster so I couldn't leave you out there for the Bloodwings."

"Well, still, thank you."

The guard nodded and shut the door. Fruity quickly made his way to the two single beds in the main room and flopped down lazily on one and I followed him to over to the free bed and climbed onto it where it then groaned loudly from the weight I put upon it.

"Well isn't this cosy?" The pegasus yawned as he turned his head to look at me.

"Well, it's better than being out there, that's for sure," I answered as I looked out the window, which dominated the entire wall beside the beds. I could see the streams of bloodwings in the darkness, and many lights still working throughout the city. The level of destruction I could see in the darkness was far worse than what I first imagined.

"What were you doing outside this late at night anyway?" He asked as he sat up. "This city is deadly at night, surely you would have discovered that already."

"In all honesty," I said turning back to face him. "I only set hoof into this world this afternoon."

"Wow really?" I nodded. "Huh, you are as fresh as they come I suppose."

"Yeah I know, I've got a lot to learn about this new world. The doctor that helped me earlier gave me a general idea."

"I know we only just met and all, but in good conscience I can't let you go back out there on your own, and I've got nothing better to do down here to spend my days in this hell."

"You want to come with me?" I asked with a raised eyebrow. Well thinking about it, this stallion knows the dangers that I'll likely run into and he did save me from a bunch of raiders and helped me get here. His help would certainly be appreciated.

"If you don't mind me tagging along."

"Um, well, sure. Celestia knows I could certainly use your help out there."

"Awesome. So Crystal, what made you leave your cosy little underground world?" He asked to make conversation.

Crap. I haven't really had time to think of a cover story to why I'm really out here. I'm gonna have to wing it as they say. Thankfully I worked for Stable-Tec as a salespony and sold many places for Stables to ponies so I had a good working knowledge of the facilities and I was given a tour around Stable 34, which was the closest Stable to where I lived and it looked pretty cramped inside. I honestly couldn't imagine hundreds of ponies living down there for long periods of times.

"Well, I was sick of living in the tight confines, and I couldn't really get a moment to myself since there aren't many places you can find that are private enough. I needed to get out and see the real world," I lied.

"Bit of a bad idea huh?"

"Should have waited till morning really shouldn't I?"

"Eeyup," He agreed. "What's your plan now then now that you're out here, doubt they'll let you back in now?"

"Well, first, I need to check out the Ministry of Awesome for anything..." I paused for a moment. I nearly blew my cover. What could be a believable reason to want to go there? "...related to my ancestor's work in creating a cybernetic spy." I mentally facehoofed, that's a little too close to the real reason.

"A cybernetic spy huh, cool."

"Heh, yea, um, apparently, my ancestors who worked on it got set up to take a fall and I want to find some answers. If the Hub is a bust,, I at least know I'll find some answers in Las Pegasus since they started work there and were moved here.

"Las Pegasus? Oh you mean New Pegasus. Wow, that's a long way to go for some answers."

"I got to know for sure, their name has been tainted ever since."

"Fair enough, well going out west will certainly be a welcome change from here, but how are we going to get there from here?"

"The doctor that helped me said there is a train that does trips from one side of Equestria to the other, and he gave me directions from here to get to the station."

"You certainly got this thought out," He nodded with a smile.

"What about you Fruity, why are you down here and not up there?" I asked pointing to the ever present clouds.

Fruity's facial expression soured. "I've been cast out of my home," He said solemnly.

I cringed at his sad expression as I had hit upon a sore subject.

"I'm sorry," I said sadly.

"Heh, not your fault but it's a subject I don't like to talk about."

"No its ok," I reassured and shifted on the bed to get comfortable when I felt the gash on my flank tear which made me cringe. I quickly got off the bed to prevent my blood from seeping onto the clean covers. A bathroom was set in the corner next to the front door of the room, and I quickly trotted over to the open bathroom door and stepped inside the clean white tiled room.

The bathroom brought back memories of my home as the layout and styling looked pretty similar. A bath filled the room at the far end, with a shower attached to the wall and a shower curtain hung on a rail spanning the width of the room. Beside the bath sat a sink with a large mirror above it, and nestled in the corner by the door was the bog. It felt good to be in something familiar, and I felt safe for the first time since I woke up. I looked into the mirror and just gawked as I finally saw what I actually looked like. Yep, I look like a zebra alright. I'm white with grey stripes covering my body and my nose. I frowned at the mohawk mane. I don't like that at all, I want my long wavy mane back. My cutiemark is gone, replaced with what looked like a large dot with lots of lines flicking off around it, which kinda made the whole thing look like an eye. Whatever that was supposed to mean, I have no idea. I can't say I'm that sad to see my cutiemark is gone. Sure, it was what symbolised my special talent, but I barely ever got to enjoy it with how often I wound up in the hospital with my diseased body. All it was was just a chocolate éclair with a couple of crystals around it to show my love of making éclairs. My gaze then fell onto my eyes, MY eyes, my baby blue eyes. They were the same as what I had before all this. I felt a joy fill my heart as I realised I still carried my own eyes, so happy to know that not all of me had been changed. I let out a sigh of relief since I know now that not all of me had been replaced.

While still looking into the mirror, I turned my body around so my rear faced it so I could get a better look at the gash in my flank. The gash on my leg I could tend to easy enough without the mirror. Wow, my plot is larger and rounder than it used to be. Well I suppose this is a true mare's rear. I was underweight due to my illnesses, so I suppose this is just an average mare's plot.

I turned back to face the sink and used a hoof to turn on the cold water tap. Folded up neatly on a porcelain bowl sat a small hoof towel. I took the minty tasting towel in my mouth and held it under the running water to get it good and damp before pulling away and then twisted my neck around so I could reach my flank. I looked up at the mirror with my eyes as I reached back to the bloody gash and when I was over it on the mirror, I leaned down and gently ran the towel over the gash softly to clear the dried blood away. I could see that once the blood has been cleared the wound had sealed itself again. I heal fast. I repeated the process with my hind leg that got cut and that too had closed. Once I was finished with the towel I chucked it into the skin to rinse it off and then put it back on the bowel.

By the time I left the bathroom I could hear snoring and giggled quietly when I saw Fruity fast asleep on his bed. He looked so adorable. He lay on his back, his wings spread wide and his legs in the air which twitched every so often. That looked so cute. I giggled quietly to myself as I made my way to my bed and laid down on it. Might as well get some sleep.

XXXXX

Shortly after dawn, Fruity and I made our way down the train line towards the Ministry District. Thankfully, all the Ministries had their own high level stations. Saved us from going down onto the ground and getting harassed by raiders every two minutes. We passed all the other Ministries on our way to the Awesome Hub, and each one looked worse for wear than the other as we got closer to the Manehattan Crater. It so happened that our destination was the last one. The Hub looked like it had a massive fire rage inside and out, as it looked totally charred black. I didn't hold out much hope that we'd find anything worth finding inside that burned out wreck, but we had to try; I had to try.

We entered the tower from the station and found ourselves inside a reception hall. The inside showed major fire damage and in several areas, the floor had collapsed to reveal the huge holes that looked into the floor below or straight down to the bottom. To our good fortune, we found a working terminal on the reception desk. After clearing the charred screen and to find it wasn't locked, we were able to out where to look. It felt too easy to find out where to go as the computer simply labelled the floor we wanted to check out as. "Spy Department". If I'm to find anything at all in this place related to me, I'd find it there. Annoyingly, its fifty floors above us. After a moment of searching, we found a shaft with stairs leading up and down and began our ascent.

"Aren't you tired you yet?" Fruity asked, sounding baffled as we made our way up the stairs. Well, he hovered in the centre while I trudged up the steps. Surprisingly, I was not feeling tired. At this point, since arriving, we had climbed about half of the stairs to our designated floor. A climb like this for any normal pony would have had them wheezing and probably collapsing with their legs feeling like jelly, but not for me. I may have been breathing a little harder than when I started to climb, but my legs still felt as strong as they did from the start. I could probably climb this entire tower and still not feel dead on my hooves. I suppose I have high endurance now too with this mechanical body.

"I feel fine," I answered him while turning to head up more steps.

The pegasus shrugged as he flapped his wings a little harder to climb faster. He stopped and came to a hover just five flights up.

"You're gonna need to find another way up; the stairs up here are blocked by the rest of the stairs going up."

"What?" I whined as I started taking the stairs two at a time to get to his level. "Aww poo". He was right. It looked like the stairs on this side of the shaft had all collapsed down onto each other from here all the way up to the top of the tower.

"Yep, definitely need to find another way up."

"Ugh, yea, um where are we?" I asked as I looked around. Thankfully, we didn't have to search long as a door just down half a flight of stairs held a sign on it saying. "Level 59". We had another eleven floors to go.

"I found a map," Fruity called from a few flights up. He could keep going up since he can fly and wasn't restricted to the stairs. "Looks like there is another shaft on the opposite side of the tower with stairs in it," He said as he fluttered back down and landed on the landing of Level 59 beside me.

"Ok, thank you Fruity, this shouldn't take us much longer," I said while opening the door.

"Oh awesome, maybe we can get back in time for Aqua Marine's fish lunchtime special," He grinned stupidly.

The mention of food made my synthetic stomach release a loud gurgle, which in this empty burnt out office floor, sounded like a roar with the echo. That prompted a light laughing fit from the purple stallion. I shot him an annoyed glare.

"It wasn't that funny!"

"Yes it was," He giggled as we made our way into the rows of cubicles. His giggling soon died down as we passed each cubicle, inside nearly every one of them we saw a burnt skeleton looking to be in the process of evacuating their station. One such victim had made it to the exit of his or her cubicle as the skeleton lay half in and half out on the floor.

"What the hell happened here?" I asked, feeling my gut churn.

"The bomb hit not too far from here, the blast must have washed right through this tower, incinerating everyone before they could leave."

"Thanks for that beautiful mental image," I whined sarcastically.

He gave a sheepish grin as we continued onwards. It didn't take us long to reach the other shaft, and thankfully, the stairs were intact, leading up on this side and so we began our ascent again. I may not have been getting tired from walking up all these stairs but it was certainly making me wish to never see another stair case again. I must have climbed several thousand steps in the space of an hour.

"What are we looking for exactly, any ideas?" Fruity asked as he flapped up the middle.

"I don't know, anything that might give me some answers," I answered looking up to see our destination on Level 70. Nearly there, thank Celestia.

We entered Level 70 to find another office like space like below, with charred and burnt cubicles along with many more skeletons. I had seen enough death in my first twenty four hours than probably the entire war did before the bombs fell. I can't believe it devolved into this. Just how desperate did we get?

"Well, this will be like trying to find a fart in a cloud jacuzzi," Fruity sighed as we walked along the aisles of cubicles to see if there is anything at all that could shed any information at all.

"Hmm, maybe we should split up. You check one half of the room and I'll check the other; we can be done quicker and be out of here before it gets late."

"What am I looking for again, so I don't discard something you might be looking for?"

"That's a good question, hmm. "Anything that you might find important or about making, um, the perfect spy."

"Alright." He nodded and turned to go down an aisle to search the other side of the floor.

I was finding it hard to walk into the booths of the dead ponies to look for clues. I felt horrible, just stepping into the same place these ponies died trying to escape. It felt like I was grave robbing as I pulled open these pony's desk draws or looking in their filing cabinets and the more I looked the more it made me feel sick. After ten cubicles I had to stop. I felt dirty.

"I'm sorry," I whimpered as I looked at the last pony's skeleton I stepped over.

I groaned as I looked up the aisle to see many more cubicles. I know I want answers to why I've become this machine but, is it worth treading over the graves of the ponies who died here and disturbing their rest? I took a deep breath to calm my nerves. Yes, it is worth it. I've had my life taken from me even though I was going to die. That would have been my natural course but my life had been stolen from me and now I've been made into this machine that is only ten percent organic. I'm not really a living thing, my brain, heart and lungs are being kept alive by my mechanical body. I need to know why so I'm sorry that I'm doing this.

I looked up to see how many cubicles there are on my side and sighed. There are loads. While I scanned over the tops of the cubicles, I noticed an office in the corner. Perhaps that's where the head of the department resided. If I were to find anything at all, that's where I'd find it. With determination, I stomped out of the aisle and made my way over to the closed door of the office and took hold of the knob with my hoof and turned it. The door didn't budge.

"Locked, great," I moaned in annoyance. The door was wooden and didn't look all that sturdy. It wasn't as charred as everything else in here but it does look to have been weakened. It looked like I might be able to break it down. With my back to the door, I reared up and bucked at the door as hard as I could. The door exploded into splinters when my hind hooves made contact with the slightly burnt wood, and with my momentum plus my high weight, I was pulled off my forehooves and fell backwards into the office. "Stupid metal body," I grumbled to myself while I lay in the wreckage of the door. Suddenly, the entire floor seemed to quake, causing everything in the office and everything outside to rattle about like an earthquake had just hit the tower, but after a few moments, it stopped. It was enough to get me back on my hooves in the excitement. "What was that?" I whimpered feeling very unsafe right now.

I looked around the office briefly and sighed with disappointment. Whoever this office belonged to, it looked like it had either already been ransacked, or the pony that owned it left in a hurry as the shelves to my left were bare, apart from the stray pieces of yellowed paper and the wall the door had sat in looked to have had any and all posters or charts taken down. The other two walls were just the windows overlooking the destroyed cityscape below. Looking out the windows, which were unfortunately smashed, I could see over a huge impact crater and rimming the crater were the remains of other towers and buildings. I suppose we are at the very edge of the effective destruction radius of the explosion which is probably why this tower still stands but burnt to a crisp. Finally, my eyes fell upon the large desk in the middle of the room and the terminal sitting on it. I edged around the wall with the shelves to stay away from the windows until I reached the desk and sat on the floor as close to it as I could. Leaning over the charred wooden table, I reached over and turned the terminal around to face me and thankfully it is still working too. Stable-Tec made things to last. I pressed a key to wake it up, and was immediately treated to a flashing screen displaying a message.

"All data transferred to Marejave Production Facility."

Damn it. If I were to find anything, it would have been here. But it was confirmed now that my answers would lie in my old home state of Equestria. Where I supposedly died. I stood up to leave before I caught a nameplate attached to the terminal casing.

"Colonel Ironside. Head of Spy Department"

I blinked at the department name. I better remember that name though as it is my only lead.

The tower quaked again, this time a little more violently, and it was followed by a loud metallic groan. "I think it's time to leave," I said to myself.

"Yeah, it sounds like this whole floor is gonna fall," Fruity agreed from behind me.

"Gah!" I cried out in shock and spun around to see the purple pegasus trying not to laugh. "How long have you been there?" I whined since I didn't even hear him land or approach.

"Only about a minute." He laughed before coughing and looking serious. "C'mon, we better buck."

I nodded, and we quickly made our way to the stairs just as a portion of the floor collapsed, creating a sloping edge towards the windows beside us. We entered the shaft again and began our way down as fast as we could. Fruity flying down the middle with me running down the steps. Thankfully, going down was a heck of a lot easier than going up, and we were making good progress when the tower quaked again, causing me to lose my footing and I started to roll down the stairs, bouncing off the corners to roll down more. I cried out loudly with pain as I bounced off each and every step and wall until finally I crashed into an open door that had opened inwards into the shaft. I cried and groaned in pain as I could feel multiple lacerations, some of them felt like my endoskeleton was exposed. I whimpered in pain as I lay there until I felt a warm glow in my chest then the lacerations started to close and heal. The glow in my chest felt warm and soothing, but as the feeling was starting to make me feel better it suddenly stopped when Fruity landed on the landing beside me.

"Holy shit, Crystal?" He gasped in surprise from my sudden tumble. "Please be alive."

I groaned and pulled myself back up to my hooves. "Yeah, I'm alive."

"Fucking hell, you are one lucky Stripe."

I groaned in pain as I tried to put my right forehoof down, and quickly picked it back up. It felt like a sprain. I guess during the fall, I had twisted my hoof pretty badly.

"Are you alright?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'll be fine, come on we better get out of here," I urged. I looked around to check to see which floor we are on. Thankfully my fall had brought me down a couple of floors above the reception hall we entered eariler. I descended the stairs as fast as I could with three good legs, and soon we found ourselves back in the reception and shortly after that, we were back out onto the train tracks.

"Ohhh yea feels good to be outside again," Fruity cheered.

I nodded and smiled since we did get out before anything really bad happened, considering the state of the tower. Now that we weren't really in any danger I became aware of a flashing blue image in my vision and when I focused on it, I could see the image is of my endoskeleton lower foreleg and a red square was highlighting the joint between my hoof and lower leg. It seemed to tell I had focused on it, and then a window flashed under the image with words.

"Minor servo and control rod damage," It said. I don't know how I'm supposed to fix that or unless it supposed to fix itself eventually? I guess I'd find out soon.

"C'mon, if we hurry we can catch Aqua Marine's fish special," Fruity said as we began to walk back towards Tenpony. That's three times now he's mentioned that. It must be good for him to keep repeating himself, and well, my stomach was growling with hunger just thinking about a fish dinner.

About half way back to the tower, I caught the sight of several white cylinders above some buildings as we moved and then a little further up a gap in the buildings allowed me to see into the harbour and the cylinders belonged to the giant white oceanliner. I stopped and looked out into the harbour and the ship. I shivered upon seeing it swarming with the undead.

"Um Fruity?" I called.

"Yello?" He said turning his attention to me.

"Why is the Gold Star Line Harbour full of zombies?" I asked.

"Not sure to be honest with you, but from what I've heard, apparently, the RMS Celestia was supposed to have her maiden voyage the day the bombs fell and there were like four thousand ponies in the harbour and boarding the ship when the Manehattan bomb hit and the proximity to the blast washed the harbour with extreme heat and magical radiation, and the end result were four thousand walking corpses," He explained

"Oh Celestia that's awful."

"Yeah, I know. They were unlucky that they lost their minds during their ghoulification, leaving them all feral like that."

"I was nearly eaten by one of them and... ghoulification?" That's something new. Eeyup, I've got a lot to learn about this new horrible world.

"Huh, oh, they aren't really zombies Crystal, they're what the wasteland calls Ghouls. Don't ask me how it works, cause I haven't a clue. Anyway, Ghouls are just normal ponies that have the unfortunate downside to looking like a walking corpse. There are thousands of Ghouls in the wasteland who were alive before the bombs fell. They're just like you and me and calling them a zombie is a great insult to them. However, the Ghouls that are known as Feral are Ghouls that have lost their minds and operate on primal instincts, so they are pretty much zombies."

"Really?" I asked in surprise.

"Yeah, if we meet one of the wasteland's many Ghouls, try not to shoot'em."

"I'll... I'll try to remember that."

While we looked out over into the harbour, our attention was torn from the giant ship as the pops and bangs of gunfire rang out somewhere behind us. It was just another reminder that we weren't truly safe outside, and with a nod, we both began our trek back to Tenpony Tower as fast as my limp would allow.

XXXXX

We had moved at a brisk pace, despite my limp, as to get back to the tower without hanging around too long in any one spot to attract attention, and we made it to the tower without incident. We met Slick at the gate again and he assigned a guard to shadow us around the tower again, as to prevent any unwanted confrontations with the inhabitants, and I really didn't want to run into another pony like Biceps.

The Mall Level was a lot more crowded than it was when we first entered it last night, and the number of baleful glares I was getting deeply unsettled me and made me very nervous as Fruity and I walked along the balcony overlooking the large fountain with a restaurant section in the middle.

The walls were lined with many shops ranging from simple trade shops, to speciality shops like barber salons or blacksmiths. The crowds were thankfully mostly giving us a wide birth as we walked along, and I was glad for that as I really did not want to bump into one of the ponies giving hateful glares, but it was upsetting that being a Zebra like this was driving ponies to avoid me.

"So where is this fish restaurant Fruity?" I asked as we walked along looking at each shop window.

There was no response.

"Fruity?" I turned to look at him only to see that he had stopped to look in a window several shops back. Oh no.

"Oh my, the rumours are true, they did let a Zebra inside," An enthusiastic mare's voice said from in front of me.

I turned with a start to see a lime green mare with a silvery mane that was done up into like a beehive with elegant curls that hung down on either side of her head smiling at me. She was also wearing a green and white dress with an open back, which kinda made it look like it was made for a pegasus.

"Oh its sooo good to finally meet a Zebra. I've wanted to meet one for so long. Oh and your mane, I've always wanted to style a Zebra mane," The mare gushed as she leaned in extremely close.

"Err," I croaked dumbfounded by the mare's enthusiasm.

"Oh where are my manners?" She gasped as she pulled back out of my personal space. "My name is Diamond Sheers and I'm the owner of Diamond Sheers Salon," She smiled softly and genuinely.

"Um, hi, err, my name is Crystal Éclair," I greeted nervously.

The mare wore a funny look when I told her my name. "That's a strange name for a Zebra, I was expecting something exotic," She said with her voice losing some of its enthusiasm.

"Err, my parents wanted to be different," I said lamely.

"I see," Her gaze then shifted up to my mowhawk. "Oh, that mane, I never styled a Zebra made and I would sooooo love the opportunity to work on one. Would you please stop by my salon later?" She asked almost begging.

"But I don't have any money."

"Oh don't worry about that, just the chance to work on a Zebra mane will be more than enough," She smiled brightly.

"Um, ok, thank you."

The stylish mare beamed as she began to walk again. "Oh thank you Crystal, can't wait for your visit," She cooed as she walked away.

"Looks like you made a friend," Fruity smiled as he stood next to me without making a sound again.

"Gah, where did you come from?" I cried.

"Oh, about the time she was gushing over your mane," He laughed. "C'mon Crys, the restaurant is this way," He said as he began to lead me again.

I followed Fruity down a flight of stairs to where the restaurants were all situated, and we came to a shop that looked like a Braytish Chippy. The Braytish Chippy takeouts were growing increasingly popular in pre-war Equestria, and a common but popular dish was battered cod and chips. Wasn't bad for a quick meal on the go.

We entered the relatively small restaurant, or rather takeou, and walked up to a counter with a display case showing several deep fried looking products including the famous battered fish and scallops. I know a scallop is a small sea critter inside a shell, but scallops in a chippy are deep fried battered potato and were actually quite nice the last time I had one.

"Ah, good afternoon Aqua Marine," Fruity smiled brightly as an aqua green mare approached the counter to take our order.

"Fruity, they let you back in?" She asked surprised.

"Yep and got a new friend," He beamed with a silly smile. "I'd like two of your fish specials to go please as payment for favour you owe me."

The mare blushed brightly, trying to hide her face behind her darker green mane. "S-sure, I'll be, be with you in a, um, in a minute," She stammered as she hurried through a door.

"What was that about?" I asked confused with the mare's change in demeanour when Fruity mentioned this favour.

"She owes me one," Fruity said blushing brightly himself. "Remember that I've been kicked out twice, well the second time I took all the blame so she wouldn't suffer a mega fine and have her takeout shut down or getting kicked out herself," He explained.

I just blinked. That's the mare he did in the fountain and he took all the blame for it? Something tells me she had something to do with it, but I kept my mouth shut. Last thing I want to do is offend somepony and get kicked out or worse.

After a couple of minutes, the mare returned and hoofed over two paper wrapped bundles in a plastic bag.

"Here are your specials, thank you for coming," She said smiling nervously at us as Fruity collected the bag with his wing.

"Thank you Aqua," Fruity smiled happily as we turned and headed out. The guard shadowing us told us we couldn't sit and eat at the tables provided since it seemed "I" was disturbing the other customers. It is a good thing Fruity asked for our meals to go, as we decided it'll be easier to just go to the room we had been provided to eat.

I smiled to myself as we entered our room. It felt good to be out of the public view since I didn't have hundreds of eyes all staring at me everywhere I went. I sat on my bed as Fruity hoofed me my meal. I gently laid the paper wrap on the bed and unwrapped it to reveal a typical fish and chips meal.

"This is the special, what's so special about fish and chips?" I asked incredulously.

"It's haddock," Fruity grinned with a broad toothy smile. I blinked and then groaned while facehooving. This guy must be one card short of a full deck. I decided to leave it there and eat my meal.

The fish was gorgeous and the chips had the right amount of salt and vinegar on them. It may not have sounded like it was like a five star dish, but it tasted better than most things I had eaten in my last few months before waking up here. In that regard, it certainly was special, and it managed to fill a hole in my stomach.

I almost had a panic attack when the first metal fork I used to eat with broke inside my mouth when I took a bite of the battered haddock and swallowed it out of reflex. Fruity was oblivious while he ate his meal and I discreetly discarded the broken fork and retrieved a couple more. As I put the fork in my mouth again after picking up a chip with it, I took the bite slowly and to my surprise as I pulled the chip off the metal prongs I could feel the steel utensil soften and flex in my mouth and strangely I got a taste of spearmint from the steel. I would have had a freak out if I didn't remember what the doctor had told me when I woke up after the raiders had knocked me out. With my mechanical body, I can eat metal now and I suppose the solid metal softening to a more chewy sweet in my mouth is what its suppose to do. I was able to finish my fish and chips without biting off more fork ends by taking it easy.

"Best damn fish ever," Fruity sighed happily as he crumpled up his paper wrapping and chucked it in the bin like a basketball.

"I might have to agree," I smiled.

"Hmm, so what should we do for the rest of the of the day?" The pegasus asked as he lay back on his bed.

"Well, I was offered a free hair cut and I need to find out when to expect the train."

"I can find out when the train will arrive, you go enjoy yourself," He smiled.

"Thanks."

XXXXX

Diamond Sheers was very enthusiastic and very good at what she did. She had asked me how I wanted my mane, and I explained to her how I once had shoulder length wavy hair, and I asked her if she could restyle my horrible mowhawk to resemble how my old mane style used to be. Thankfully, her special talent lied in hair magic and she was able to grow my mane so it would be long enough. Using an assortment of hair products, combs and curlers, she was able to get my mane back into a similar style to what I used to have as a Crystal Pony. She applied hair colour changing magic to rid all of the grey stripes in my mane apart from the stripe at the very front. I quite like how the end result turned out, and I expressed my gratitude. She had simply told me it was her pleasure and that she now had bragging rights to her competitors that she had worked on a Zebra's mane. I left her salon feeling better with myself now that I had a new mane style and felt more like my old self, though I did attract more looks.

Later that afternoon I met up with Fruity back in our temporary room, and he told me that the next train to the west would arrive within the week. At first, he suggest we could just hang around the tower until the train was to arrive, but I managed to convince him to show me the station as I wanted to know how to get there, and a part of me wanted to see more of Manehattan.

The station from the front looked like a large long stone building, dominated by ticket windows and a steel canopy displaying the names of Equestrian cities along its length. After we walked through the open doors by one of the ticket offices, we entered into a gigantic steel and glass roofed structure, almost like an epic greenhouse without glass walls that covered the entire area with the several platforms and the shops and cafes. It was certainly an amazing building, and the wrecks of several old Equestrian and Braystish steam trains added to its grandeur despite them being wrecks. We guessed we found the train's platform when we came to one where the two lanes of track were clear of all rubble, and appeared to be maintained and well used if the clean metal on the tops of the rails were any indication.

"Wow this place is amazing," I said as we walked up and down the platform.

"Yeah" Fruity agreed as we came to a large poster on a notice board that detailed the Ministry of Arcane Science, with a picture of Twilight Sparkle holding a book in one hoof and a flask with a glowing liquid in the other.

"So how long until..." I got cut off as a loud whistle rang out in the distance beyond the station. "Was that the train?" I asked looking west in surprise.

"That can't be it, I mean it'll be a week early if it is."

As we watched the ruined horizon, we began to see the plumes of grey smoke that only a steam engine could produce, and then the sounds of the pistons chugging away. I watched in amazement as the huge steam train approached the station. It looked amazing, something I've never seen before even in Las Pegasus, and the several train journeys I had embarked on when visiting family back in the Empire. I never once saw a Braytish engine like the one that just pulled up into the station.

The locomotive steamed into the station and grinded to a halt, before reaching the end of the platform, and once it came to a complete halt, the driver stepped out from the cab and walked along the length of the tender before he disappeared into the gap between the tender and the first car. Another pony came out of the first train car and looked around for passengers, while more doors along the length of the train opened and passengers disembarked and began to rearm themselves before making their way to the exits, thankfully completely ignoring us.

Our attention was then redirected towards the steam engine as it let out another whistle and began to pull away from the train. The engine itself wasn't like cylinders on wheels that I remember, this one seemed to have a wing like shape appearance, and its sloping front and straight walled boiler gave it a very streamlined appearance.

"Where is it going?" Fruity asked as the engine disappeared out the station and out of sight.

"The locomotive needs to be turned around before it can pull the train back west," A stallion said as he approached us.

The unicorn stallion that approached us wore a black jacket over his grey coat, and his mane was mostly hidden beneath a conductors hat. His face was dominated by a thick handlebar moustache and a monocle over his left eye.

"Oh," Fruity said and then chuckled to himself, feeling embarrassed at his silly question.

"I'm the Conductor for this train and I'm to assume you will be riding with us today?" He asked.

I stepped forward and the Conductor raised an eyebrow as he saw me. "Um, yes sir, we'd like to get to Las... err, New Pegasus," I told him while giving my best smile.

"Hmm, alright, is that a single or a return ticket?" He asked as his horn began to glow.

I looked at Fruity. "I've been drifting from place to place since I got kicked out of the clouds. I don't mind if it's a one way trip. Would be a nice change of scenery," He said with a smile.

"Two single tickets please."

"That would be a thousand caps for the both of you," The Conductor said as he made two golden tickets appear in front of him.

"HOW MUCH!" I cried out in shock. I knew train tickets were expensive as a return ticket to the Crystal Empire and back was around five hundred bits. I don't know how much a cap is to a bit, but a thousand caps for a single ticket just sounds ridiculously overpriced.

"Here you go," Fruity said as he chucked the Conductor a bag that jingled noisily when he caught it in his magic.

"Thank you and here are you tickets," He said giving us both a ticket each while he stuffed the pouch into a pocket. I just gaped at Fruity.

"What?"

"That was a thousand caps!" I cried.

"Yeah, don't worry, it's easy to make caps out here, you can sell practically anything for a good price. Heh, as a pony once said, "Trade will save the Wasteland"

"But that was a thousand," I said still unable to comprehend him readily shelling that much out.

"Don't worry about it really, I'm happy to help," He said giving a goofy smile.

Before I could argue further, the wing shaped locomotive puffed back down the line on the opposite side and disappeared again behind the cream and brown Pullmare passenger cars. Wait a minute! Pullmare, that's the name that's plastered on the sides of like the most luxurious train cars in all Equestria. Well I suppose I can understand the huge price tag then since we'll be riding in these top of the range luxury cars.

"This way please," The Conductor said as he turned around and began to lead us down the length of the train. This was a long train. It was ten cars long and each car was around sixty feet in length. It was amazing the locomotive could pull these. The cars were all brown, with a cream strip running the length of each car that ran along the level of the windows, and the roofs of each car were either cream or grey. Each car also wore the name "Pullmare" emblazoned in large gold gild letters around the mid way point of the cars. We passed a brake car at the end, then passed a couple of open parlour cars and then stopped as the Conductor opened a door to a corridor car.

"Thank you," I said as we entered the car.

"You can use any of the cabins on this car," The unicorn said as he stepped on after us. "There are also toilets on either end of the car. You will find a buffet car and a bar in the next two cars towards the front of the train if you feel hungry or thirsty during the three week journey across the Wasteland."

"Thank you," I said again as the Conductor stepped back onto the platform, and we opened a door in the narrow corridor to a luxurious cabin. Both walls were lined with deep red cushioned benches, a white cloth covered table fixed to the wall under the window in the middle which had a beautiful brass lamp fixed to the table and the whole cabin was lined with mahogany. I couldn't imagine how much this must have cost back in its day.

"Holy shit this is comfy," Fruity exclaimed as he sat and reclined on one of the benches. "Hmm, feels like the cushions are filled with clouds."

I smiled, watching him lounge comfortably as I too took a seat on the opposite bench. I gently eased my flank onto the plush cushion, and eeped quietly as my rump sank deeply into the fabric, but thankfully it held my weight. After a moment I smiled at the softness of the bench. "Wow this is comfy."

Fruity opened his mouth to say something, when the whole train shuddered and rocked back slightly. "The heck was that?" His question was then answered when a loud whistle rung out from up ahead, and then the Conductor shouted at the top of his lungs. "ALL ABOARD!" which was then followed by another shudder and loud chugging before the train began to move.

"Ah, we're moving, awesome," Fruity said as he looked out the window as we passed out from the station.

The train let out another couple of whistles before its speed began to increase rapidly, until before long, we were speeding down the rails at a great speed. I stared out in horror at the passing countryside as everything I saw was dead, poisoned or destroyed, while the ever present cloud cover kept everything in a perpetual darkness which added to the horrible scenery.

"It's all destroyed?" I asked leaning close to the window.

Fruity opened his eyes, looked out the window and sighed. "Yeah. Everything has been destroyed. The war ruined Equestria greatly. I may have only lived in this Wasteland for five years but I can see why the Enclave made damn sure that coming down here was against the law," He said with a pained look in his eyes.

"Is that why they cast you out?" I asked softly.

Fruity simply nodded but didn't say anything. I didn't want to press the issue, I'm sure he'll tell me when he's ready and I suppose I can tell him my secret too soon.

XXXXX

For most part of a week the train journey was uneventful. We learned the locomotive pulling this train was a Braytish streamlined locomotive called the "Union of Equestria" and that it is capable of maintaining a hundred and ten miles per hour, and could reach over a hundred and twenty but pushing the old locomotive to those speeds would be dangerous. This locomotive's impressive speed was also why it arrived at the station a week early, as a standard Braytish engine pulled the train before. It turned out the locomotive’s original fuel source was coal, the substance the war originally was over until Princess Moonbutt made it about a show of force and destroying our enemy. But since coal was no longer available or too expensive or scarce, the machine's tender had been filled with as much flammable material as possible to keep the loco powered.

During the week, we stopped off at several places such as Dodge Junction and Appaloosa where we picked up more passengers. Thankfully, the train was also guarded so the slavers in Appaloosa didn't try anything. I decided to stay in the train car since as more ponies boarded, the more hateful stares I got when moving between cars to get something to eat or drink.

I yawned loudly as I woke up on the seventh day of our trip to find Fruity staring out the window looking worried.

"What is it?" I asked beginning to feel uneasy.

"We got trouble," He said not taking his gaze off the window.

I followed his gaze to see a small group of heavily armed Griffins flying close. They all looked menacing as they carried their weapons in their eagle talons. I gulped as I took in the weapon in their claws.

I could see several Zebrica Assault Rifles, one Anti-Machine Rifle and one AER-14 Magical Laser Rifle. I didn't know how I knew what the weapons were. I had never seen them before in my life, but yet I knew what they were from just one glance. I think it might have something to do with the computer in my brain because each time my eyes focused on a weapon I felt a tingling in the back of my head. It was a deeply disturbing thought that I've been programmed to know all these weapons.

"Oh shit!" Fruity cried out when a new Griffin flew into view holding a missile launcher and fired a missile at the train.

All hell broke loose, and then there was the train guard and the Griffins began to exchange fire. I watched, frozen in horror, as the missile streaked closer and closer. Bullets and laser beams began to fly back and forth, but some of the projectiles seemed to be focused on the missile, as it grew closer and closer until the missile exploded into a gigantic fireball that washed over one of the train cars further up the train.

"Holy Celestia! ”Fruity exclaimed, when the train rocked violently as we came to a curve in the track that allowed us to then see the train car the missile had been aimed at. The missile must have been an incendiary missile as the train car was on fire.

The Griffins flew all over the train, while the guards defended to the best of their abilities. The guard focused their efforts on the missile wielding Griffin which they managed to dispatch quickly, since all fire was directed at him. I didn't know how many guards were lost, but after several long minutes of fighting, only two Griffins remained and they flew away defeated.

I got out of my seat and headed for the door.

"Where are you going?" Fruity asked still in shock.

"C'mon, we gotta help put that fire out," I said, not wanting to just sit around and do nothing when I could be doing something to help. "If we don't do anything that fire could spread."

"Right," Fruity said as he got out of his seat and followed me.

We squeezed passed panicking ponies along the corridor cars, and the buffet and bar cars until we were stopped by two guards at the gangway door to the next car, which was wide open, showing a raging inferno on the other side. Fire crews were using fire extinguishers to keep the fire from spreading to the next car.

"Why are you just holding it back, it could burn this whole train to the ground!" I cried.

"Relax, the frame is reinforced steel, the fire won't destroy the train. It'll just burn itself out when all the wood has burned up," One of the guards said dismissively.

Another guard sporting a rather nasty looking gunshot wound to his shoulder approached us. "Has the car been evacuated?" He asked as he leaned against the wall for support, while pressing a hoof to his shoulder.

"Yea, it’s empty," One guard said with a bored expression.

"Is it?" The other guard pressed.

"Yea..." The guard repeated but got cut short when an Earth Pony mare came charging up the corridor and headed right for the door to the burning car. She bowled past me, but the two guards at the door managed to grab her and stop her from getting through.

"Whoa, hold your horses you can't go in there."

"MY FOAL!" The mare screamed still trying to get through.

"What?" I yelled hearing her cry.

"I thought you said it was evacuated!" The injured guard yelled angrily.

"No sane pony would sit in a burning car," The other guard retorted.

"Yea, but a foal wouldn’t be able to do anything."

"It's too late now sir, it's way too hot and full of smoke for us to do anything."

"No my little filly," The mare cried as she broke down.

I looked up from the crying mare and stared at the burning interior of the opposite passenger car. A little filly was likely burning to death inside that car. A filly who would never experience the gift of life. No, I couldn't let an innocent filly die like this without her living her life. I narrowed my eyes in determination and looked at the mare.

"Where is your filly?" I demanded.

The mare blinked at me in confusion.

"Where is she? I'm going to get her."

"Are you crazy?" Fruity shouted in shock.

"I can make it, I'm a Zebra remember?"

"Yea, but you are still flesh and bone," He argued. It hurt to hear that since I really wasn’t just flesh and bone. I may have flesh, but under it I am just a machine, and that was why I believed I can save this filly.

"Where is she?" I asked the mare again, ignoring Fruity's protests.

"Mi...middle cabin," The mare croaked through tears.

I nodded and made my way to the door. I was scared, scared of burning to death, but I just couldn't let this filly die without trying. I beat my fear down with a stick to keep it from paralysing me. One of the guards got in my way to stop me, but I just kept walking, even when he put his forehooves on my shoulders to stop me. I was glad my limp healed in the week I've been on this train, as I was able to put all my strength into my steps. I couldn't help the smile that appeared on my face at the guard's shocked and confused expression as he was being forced back without any effort on my part.

"Let her go," The injured guard told the one blocking me.

The guard nodded and jumped aside to let me through, and I stepped into the burning corridor car. Immediately, my threat warning flashed a constant red, and a message appeared at the top of my vision.

"Warning, temperature levels exceeding safe parameters.”

Pain began to lance its way through my body as I took each step. The floor felt like I was walking on a frying plate, and I could feel my skin starting to blister from the heat. This was so a bad idea. I squinted in pain as I looked at the doors to my right, counting each one I passed. I remembered the car that Fruity and I were staying in it had seven compartments, and that meant the centre compartment was number four.

I grunted in pain as I came to the fourth door and pushed it open. Thankfully, the fire hadn't reached into the room yet. I looked around frantically until my eyes fell upon a bundle on one of the benches. I hissed with pain as the belt of my stablesuit burned into my skin as the heat was turning the metal segments into red hot pokers. I bent my head down and held my ear close to the filly's muzzle and to my great relief she was still alive. As gently as I could, I wrapped the sheets she was sleeping in around her to completely encase her in attempt to protect her from the fire and smoke. The smoke wasn't affecting me it seemed, I must have something inside me keeping the smoke from doing anything, more questions I need answers to. I would have to run, taking the filly out of the cabin would be exposing her to the full force of the heat and I doubt she'd survive long. After ensuring the filly was tightly wrapped up, I picked her up in my teeth and began my way back. The fire had intensified in the corridor when I left the cabin and only a few steps after leaving, I felt a searing pain running up my back. Sparing a quick glance behind me, I had to grind my teeth hard to stop myself from screaming in agony as I watched my tail burn away. I began to gallop. My flesh ripped and torn from the bubbling blisters bursting along my body. The pain was indescribable especially, when you're on fire. Suddenly, a door beside exploded into splinters and I reflexively turned by head away to stop the shower of splinters from hitting my face, and more importantly, the helpless filly. But then, I felt more searing pain as the flames from the cabin set my mane and suit alight. It took every ounce of willpower not to scream as I felt the fire burn my mane away and cooking my neck and head along with my stablesuit disintegrating and melting into my skin.

"Why the hell am I doing this?" A part of my screamed in my head.

"To save an innocent life," The rational side would shout back.

"Is it worth burning to death?”

"It's better than sitting around letting the foal die."

A siren rang in my ears even as one of them burned off. My vision began to flicker and grow hazy as warnings flashed around the edges of my vision. I could feel my mechanical body starting to fail on me. The heat was overwhelming. I could feel my boiling blood running down my legs and anywhere else blisters had burst. I have to get out NOW!

I rounded the corner just as I lost vision in one eye, and saw the open gangway door. Not wanting to spend a single moment more in this oven I ran as fast as I could. The guard at the door didn't have a chance to get out my way as I bowled him over and quickly gave the mare the bungle. Thankfully, my muzzle hadn't burned up like the rest of me. Once the mare took the bungle I let out an agonised scream in the cool environment of the not burning train car. I could still feel my flesh cooking.

"Oh my gosh Crystal," Fruity cried as he looked me over.

I whimpered and hissed in pain as I looked at myself. My stablesuit was long gone, burned off and melted into my flesh. The metal segments of the belt looked to have sunk into my skin. My saddlebags had disintegrated which also meant I have lost my 9mm Pistol. I was bleeding slowly from multiple burst blisters all over my body and I looked to have lost small chunks of my flesh and I think I can see parts of my metal body showing in some of the deepest holes. I kinda looked like a ghoul.

"Somepony help her!" The pegasus yelled.

A pony with a familiar pink cross badge ran up to the mare, who by now, had unwrapped her foal and was hugging her tightly as tears of joy ran down her cheeks.

"She's alive," The mare cried happily. The mare then looked up at the train doctor. "No, help her first."

I panted hard to rid my lungs of the hot air as my vision swam, and the gentle oscillation of the train felt like I was being thrown about and forced me to sit down hard. That was a bad idea as it felt like my flesh stuck to the floor.

"I don't know how I can treat third degree burns like this, especially on a full body," The doctor said sadly. He opened a medical box strapped to his side and pulled out two bottles filled with a glowing purple liquid. "These Super Healing Potions should stabilise her condition until you can get her to a hospital." The doctor said more to Fruity. The doctor opened the bottles and held them to my still intact muzzle and told me to drink them which I did eagerly. Within seconds of consuming the strong potions, I could feel the gaping holes and blisters seal themselves.

"Thank you," I croaked, feeling the burning in my skin subside although it left me looking like something out of fire victims nightmare with my misshapened burn skin.

"C'mon Crys, let's get you back to our cabin," Fruity urged as he gently draped a wing over my back let me lean on him as we began to walk.

"Thank you so much miss Zebra, thank you for saving my filly," The mare cried happily as we slowly made our way back to our cabin.

It felt like it took us hours to make it back to our cabin, and as soon as we entered, I flopped down onto one of the benches feeling utterly drained.

"Warning, power cells at twenty percent, gem consumption required for substantial power replenishment." Flashed in my vision as I lay on the bench.

Fruity sat down on the bench facing me as I closed my eyes. "You stupid mare, looks what's happened to you!" He almost yelled but he sounded on the verge of tears.

"I couldn't sit there and do nothing Fruity, I couldn't let an innocent child who hasn't had a chance to live die like that," I moaned cracking my eyes open. "What would you have had me do?"

"I..I don't know, just not aimlessly put your life at risk like that," He said, despite my damaged vision I could see tears starting to well up in his eyes.

"I'm a pony of the old world Fruity, life was more precious back then and, I never got a chance to live my life properly because of my health problems," I sighed. "I couldn't let a foal not have her life like I didn't," I mentally slapped myself as I stupidly told Fruity that I wasn’t from a Stable.

"What do you mean you are a pony of the old world?" He asked.

"Err, just Stable talk," I groaned out quickly.

"Um, ok," Fruity said, leaning back as his welling tears ran down his cheek. I sighed internally that he believed me. "You really scared me back there, I've never felt so scared for anypony in my life."

"I'm sorry."

"I suppose it's ok, you're here now, alive, it's better than you being a roast pony."

I gave him a weak smile before closing my eyes again. This train journey started out so well.

Chapter 3: Explosive Welcome

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Fallout Equestria: Influx

Chapter 3: Explosive Welcome

The pink steam engine and its colourful assortment of passenger cars puffed away from the station, leaving me standing on the platform. I wore a long hooded cloak that kept my body entirely concealed, and was enchanted with an invisibility spell so nopony could see me. The last thing my mission needed was for somepony to freak out from seeing me before I made it to my target. The large crowd of passengers from the train began to disperse, and I began to move to prevent somepony walking into me. I looked up to see my destination: the spire of the Crystal Palace beyond the gate to the Crystal Empire... Something in the back of my mind was telling me I was born here, but that didn’t make any sense since I'm a machine.

This was no time for feeling some misplaced nostalgia; I had a mission to complete and I was wasting time. I began to walk forward, being careful not to get too close to any of the ponies entering the city. I knew the cloak will keep me hidden from the Empire's shield detection spell but I was still a physical presence, so I would be discovered if somepony happened to touch me. The main street leading directly to the palace would make the fastest route but it was also densely populated with a high risk area of accidentally bumping into somepony and since I’ve been here on multiple occasions as a filly, which again makes no sense, I knew a good number of backstreets I could use to be out of the way and still get me to my destination without much difficulty.

The back streets were less populated as I had expected, and I was making good progress through the streets towards the palace. The empire seemed so peaceful. Everypony was just minding their business without a care in the world. Didn't they know there was a war on? Didn't they care if they died? I had heard that the empire was staying neutral and that they didn't want to be involved, but they were still a part of Equestria after all, since a Princess and a Prince from Equestria's royalty had taken over when the empire had been returned and when Tyrant King Sombra was defeated at the claws of Twilight Sparkle's little drake. Celestia knows we could’ve used the resources the empire had, specifically the Crystal Heart. If we could harness the shield spell within the heart we could properly protect our cities and towns from attack and the ever increasing threat of balefire.

I had stopped to make sure I am going in the right direction when my eyes fell upon an elderly couple sitting in their front garden on lounging chairs. Squares appeared in my vision around their heads, and words began to appear from the lines coming off the squares as the computer in my brain worked to identify who and what my eyes had focused on. After a moment, the two crystal ponies had names next to their squares. "Chocolate Éclair" for the elderly stallion and "Strawberry Éclair" for the elderly mare. I groaned to myself as I held the back of my head as a sudden pain ran through my brain. Memories of a dull, pink and yellow filly splashing in a garden paddling pool, giggling and laughing as her grandparents gently splashed her and played with her, celebrating Hearths Warming and opening large presents and other memories involving the two elderly ponies pushed themselves into my head like they had been suppressed. I felt conflicted; did I know them? Should I know them? Why did they seem important to me? I didn't know, and these strange memories were slowing me down. With a shake of my head to dislodge the memories holding me, I tore my gaze away from the couple and continued on towards the palace.

I walked slowly while I tried to get my brain under control; it just wouldn't stop filling my head with memories of a pony that wasn't me. I was a Zebra, and more importantly I was a bio-mechanical Zebra. I wasn't born; I was built for the purpose of infiltration, assassination and sabotage. It didn't make any sense why I had these memories, but they were also filling me with a sense of pain I couldn't explain either. I closed my eyes tight, and focused on shutting out the memories so I could focus on my task. "Neural processing stabilised" Appeared in my HUD, and I sighed with relief while I continued.

After a good twenty minutes, I came out of a backstreet and into the palace plaza near its western leg. I could see the heart spinning slowly in the centre of the magic circle that surrounded the palace and being held in an anti-gravity field by the two small nodes protruding from the bottom of the palace and the floor. Thankfully, the plaza wasn't as well populated as I had thought; it would make getting to the Crystal Heart that much easier. I quickly made my way to the spinning crystal. As soon as I took the heart, my invisibility cloak would light up like a firework on bonfire night, so I’d need to make my escape fast, as Princess Cadence and Prince Armour would be on my tail within seconds.

I discarded my cloak, and turned around, lifting my tail. Nano-fibres in the hairs of my tail allowed me to tightly grip the crystal, and then yank it from its anti-gravity field. I let out a soft groan of pain as the Heart pulled on my tail hairs, and it fell without the support of the magic nodes. Almost instantly, the clear skies of the empire began to shimmer and ripple like a stone dropped into a pond.

"Time to make my escape," I said out loud to myself as I pushed off with all my strength with my hind legs and began to run as fast as I could. My heavy hoof falls cracked the crystal road as I galloped past civilians and the occasional crystal guard.

"She's got the heart!" A pony yelled in shock surprise, which then prompted more civilians to gasp and cry out.

"Get her!" I heard another shout, and soon I was having a large mob chasing me, but my enhanced strength was allowing me to pull away from them.

In a bright flash of light in front of me, I saw a snow white stallion unicorn with a two tone blue mane appear,, looking pissed.

"Prince Armour, Ex-Captain of Celestia's Royal Guard. Speciality, Defensive Shields," Appeared next to the identified stallion as I focused on him and then dug my hooves into the crystal road and grinded to a halt.

"Return the Crystal Heart immediately," The Prince barked angrily.

I looked around to see if I could make a daring dash to some alley or ginnel to make an escape, or throw them off, but I found myself surrounded by crystal pegasus guards.

"I repeat, return the Crystal Heart immediately!" The Prince yelled more forcefully this time.

I tightened the grip of my nano-fibres around the heart as I lowered myself into a fighting stance. All around me, I could hear civilians and guards starting to murmur fearfully as the sky dulled from a pleasant clear blue sky to a dark cloudy gray and a cold draft began to blow through the city as the illusionary shield generated by the Heart collapsed.

Suddenly, as Prince Armour was about to make a move, another flash signalled the arrival of another being. A bright pink alicorn princess stepped forward, looking hurt and upset. That emotional combination didn't suit Princess Cadence well at all, and it made me cringe internally.

"Princess Cadence, Empress of the Crystal Empire and Alicorn of Love."

I really didn't want to get into a fight with an alicorn. Well, it was safe to say I had failed in my mission to acquire the Heart.

"Please, you don't know what you are doing. Please return the Heart," She pleaded sadly.

I lowered my tail, but still held the Heart tightly. Throwing the Heart into the air would draw their attention and with it off me, I could make a break for it while they scramble to stop the Crystal Heart from crashing into the floor.

A powerful gust of wind tore through the street, which was then followed by a biting chill in the air as the artic winds that the shield spell kept out came in unobstructed now that the shield had completely collapsed. Snow began to fall into the city and then three distant booms were heard. It seemed only the royal couple and I had heard them as only the three of us looked up to the sky beyond the city limits.

Princess Cadence paled as three cylindrical objects appeared in the sky, heading towards the Empire at high speeds.

"You brought the war to us," Prince Armour spat with venom as he disappeared again in a bright flash. Seconds after he had disappeared, a bright purple shield dome soon surrounded most of the crystal city.

"My husband may be talented in his shields but he won't be able to stop them. It is too late now to return the Heart, the missiles will hit before I can put it back into place and for the shield to reform," The alicorn said sadly as she sat down defeated.

"…I'm sorry," I said lamely. I had just brought death to an entire civilization, and I couldn't think of a single word to express how sorry I was for it. I may have been designed and programmed to assassinate specific targets, but I felt no joy in killing, and killing innocent lives just felt utterly wrong to me.

The first missile slammed into the purple shield, and it shattered like glass, raining purple sparkles all over the city, but the shield held long enough to deflect the missile. The missile swerved off course and flew beyond the city to hit somewhere in the frozen wastes. The horizon was lit up by a tremendous green explosion and mushroom cloud when the missile detonated.

I watched as the second missile descended. Following it trajectory it would strike the Crystal Palace. Oh Celestia, what have I done?

There was a bright purple flash as Prince Armour reappeared and pulled his wife into a tight embrace. They hugged and cried as the second missile slammed into the palace and in a brilliant green explosion of balefire and radiation the palace disappeared as it was vaporized. A wall of heat and radiation rushed over use, tearing most ponies apart and shattering the buildings close to the impact zone as the bomb unleashed its power of death upon the Empire.

Princess Cadence and Prince Armour remained in their tight embrace as fire and radiation tore through them. I watched with horror as the two ponies burned in green fire and turned to ash. The two ash ponies locked in their embrace soon disintegrated as the shockwave passed through them, scattering them to the winds.

"WARNING, FLESH COMPROMISED.... EXTERNAL HEAT LEVELS BEYOND SAFE LEVELS."

I looked down at myself and saw that I too was consumed by green fire, burning my skin and flesh from my endoskeleton.

Suddenly, a bright green flash caught my attention, and as I turned my head, I saw a pony walking towards me. My vision suddenly lost colour, and everything became a shade of red as my organic eyes burned away. I couldn't believe this pony wasn't burning in the balefire as she approached me. If I could widen my eyes they would have when the pony came into focus. I recognised her. I couldn't tell what her colour was from the red haze of my synthetic eyes but I knew. She was pink with creamy yellow hair in her tail and mane. Her most striking feature however was her eyes, the baby blue eyes that were identical to my organic eyes. I didn't know how it was possible with me but she was my mother. I could feel a part of my brain wanting to be let out, to remember everything but all I could get was that she was extremely important to me and that I loved her more than anything. It is also why the look of utter shame and disappointment on her face hurt me deep in my beating heart.

"Crystal, I am so disappointed in you," She said shaking her head when the last missile struck the ground behind me.

My mother instantly turned to ash and blew away from the explosion which also ripped away what was left of my own skin.

"NO MOTHER!" I screamed with true emotional pain.

The blast wave slammed into my robotic body and threw me off my hooves. I cried out as I could feel my reinforced endoskeleton starting to break apart as I bounced and scraped along the jagged crystal roads and then I bounced off a large jagged crystal boulder at the rim of the first missile impact crater. With my vision going fuzzy, I stared down into the pit of balefire as I began to fall into the flames.

XXXXX

I bolted up on the bench gasping for breath from the nightmare that had just plagued my dreams. I couldn't believe I had just dreamt that; I could have been responsible for destroying the Crystal Empire. My birthplace for Luna's sake. I certainly hope I wasn't used for anything like that in the five years I had been unconscious. I just didn't have a clue if I’d just been sleeping through whatever had been done to me, or if I had been functioning. I certainly hope not. Being a bio-mechanical zebra was so going to be a pain in the flank.

Blinking my eyes to rid myself of sleep, I looked towards the window to see that it is still kinda dark out; I thought it was morning, but this constant cloudy grey sky was making it difficult to get a sense of time.

I let out a yawn, feeling a little weak while I sat up on the comfy bench and lifted my left foreleg to look at my pipbuck. As my eyes focused on the screen, it turned on. Hmm, the doctor had said he had connected it directly to my system, and that I should be able to control it by thinking at it. Well, might as well give it a try. I concentrated on wanting to look at my status tab, which would give me a reading of my health, time of day and date. Nothing happened for a few moments and just as I was about to think it wasn't going to work and that I would have to do it manually, I felt a prick at the back of my mind, like a spark sending a little shock throughout my brain, and then the screen flicked over to the status tab.

"Huh, it worked," I said out loud in astonishment.

SNORT!

I jumped in surprise as Fruity snorted loudly as he woke up. It was only then that I realised just how quiet it actually was on the train this early in the morning. The only real sounds I could hear were the rhythmic clickity clack of the train wheels going over the joints in the track, or the occasional bang as they ran over a rather rough segment. I caught a glimpse of the time before Fruity's snort and it was only gone four in the morning.

"No don't revoke my licence again...huh, oh right.... dream, phew," Fruity moaned as he sat up and rubbed his eyes with his forehooves. "Stupid Enclave, stupid Mutfruit," He muttered quietly, so quietly I had to strain to hear him even with my cybernetic hearing.

"Are you ok?" I asked feeling concerned.

"Ugh, yea I'm...HOLY SHIT!" He screamed as he looked at me. In a blink of an eye, he propelled himself into the air and flew across the small cabin, standing before me. His sudden appearance surprised me, and I instinctively pushed myself back against the bench as Fruity leaned in close and began looking me over.

"Fruity, what...?" I squeaked out before he interrupted me.

"Oh Celestia, thank the heavens you are alright," He said, growing a bit teary.

I blinked in confusion and then took the time to look at myself. To my relief, my hide wasn't melted or burnt like it was when I passed out last night, but instead it was like nothing happened to me. My fur was pristine white with light grey stripes again. I smiled happily as I placed a forehoof onto my chest, and pressed just hard enough so that I could feel the talisman imbedded into my chest piece.

"I guess I took those potions at the right time," I said, remembering the two super healing potions I drank after I rescued that filly. I couldn't tell him the real reason, no, not just yet. Though I wanted to. I was scared of what the outcome would be.

"I was so worried for you," He said, sitting back with relief washing over him.

"You were worried, aww that's so sweet," I smiled playfully, and teasingly to try and lighten the mood. "It's nice to know you care."

Fruity blushed beet red. "Um, well, yes of course, um you are my friend after all."

I smiled warmly at him. "Thank you Fruity, I'm fine."

Still blushing, he let out a silly giggle. Suddenly, there was a loud rumble which originated from my stomach. I giggled, embarrassed at the loudness of my stomach's complaint.

"Wow, somepony is hungry," He laughed.

"Hehe, yea," I blushed and stroked my empty stomach.

"Err, I'll, um, go see what will be for breakfast," He said, and before I could tell him how early it was, he was out the door.

I giggled softly to myself. It was heartwarming to see a pony as nice as him, and he seemed pretty cute when I teased him. I was glad he found me in Manehattan; if not for him I could be pretty much lost or dead right now. I leaned back against my seat again and let out a content sigh, before suddenly a warning message flashed across my vision in bright red letters.

"WARNING, ENERGY LEVELS AT 11%, GEM CONSUMPTION REQUIRED FOR SUBSTANTIAL ENERGY REPLENISHMENT."

What? Eleven percent. But it was at twenty when I passed out. I looked down at my pristine body again, and then at my chest. The talisman had had to reconstruct my entire burnt skin and regrew my fur. I suppose the nine percent drop was from the talisman rebuilding all the damage I had taken. Well this was also now very worrying because, where was I supposed to find gems? I was on a train that was heading for New Pegasus and I couldn't get off to go looking for gems. I'd most likely run out of power before I even find any. Oh this was bad.

I could feel panic setting in as I began to look around in worry about losing power. The table lamp caught my eye, and I wound up just staring at the softly glowing brass lamp fixed to the table. Why did the lamp look important all of a sudden and why did I feel drawn to it? I scooted over to get as close to the table, as I could and gently tilted the lampshade, up to reveal the bulb or should I say, Light Crystal.

A square appeared around the gem and text began to scroll down the side of my vision as something in my brain identified the crystal.

"Light Crystal, small magical light emitting gemstones most commonly used in household lighting and small portable lighting devices aimed for use by pegasi and earth ponies. Light Crystals come in a variety of strengths, ranging from the common household 40watt to 60watt gems to high powered gems, for example police spotlights."

I let out a groan with that familiar electric tingle in the back of my head as my brain was flooded with the information about the glowing crystal.

"Accepted for consumption," Then flashed across the top of my vision.

I could eat that? Wait, of course. The doctor said I had a synthetic stomach that could process food, metal and gems to recharge my power cells and for repairs. I did eat a fork by accident the previous day. I licked my lips while I stared at the gem, feeling unsure. This was a magical gem, what would it be like to eat it? Would it be like the time your best friend dares you to lick a square battery that gives you a jolt, or will it be like eating a chilly pepper or a sweet that'll dissolve in your mouth?

I sighed as I plucked the gem out of its brass cradle with my forehoof, and held the small pebble like gem before my muzzle. I hesitated about putting the magical gem into my mouth. I mean it wasn’t something a normal pony would do. I knew dragons eat gems like this but not ponies like me, err I mean zebra. But, I wasn’t a pony anymore though was I? My stomach growled noisily in protest with my hesitation. I needed to recharge, and I didn't want to run out of power so I didn’t really have a choice. Closing my eyes, I opened my maw and chucked the gem into my mouth and closed it.

My eyes flew open as the gem settled on my tongue and turned into the consistency of a chewy Wham Bar, a chewy fruity strip from before the war. Not only that, my mouth was filled with the taste of bananas. Hmm, I love bananas. I cooed happily as I chewed on the banana flavoured Light Crystal for a few seconds, and then swallowed. As soon as the gem hit my stomach and was processed, I felt a wave of energy rush through my body. I could feel my entire endoskeleton powering up. I could feel each and every joint become more responsive and smoother in its function. I felt more alert than before. I hated to say this but the sensation felt good.

"Power levels at 16%."

Wow, that one little gem gave me a five percent increase in power. Eating that gem wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I might just be able to get used to this... I hope. It was still weird.

"Bloody hell," Fruity muttered as he backed in through the door to our compartment.

"Fruity?" I asked as I turned to face him. He had his back to me, and his head stuck out the door looking down the corridor.

He pulled his head back in a minute later. "Just saw three dudes wearing overcoats and they looked like a nasty bunch, not to mention one of them had one of those drum fed combat shotguns."

"Well, let's not get in their way then."

"Works for me," He said as he sat down on the bench opposite.

"When will they be serving breakfast?" I asked him to change the subject.

"Huh... Oh right. Um, breakfast won't be served until seven."

"So, less than three hours," I groaned as my stomach rumbled again. That gem did nothing but give me a little boost.

"Yea, we just gotta sit pretty for a little while."

He shifted on his seat so he could lie down on his back and for the first time since I met him, I noticed his flank and his cutie mark, or lack thereof. Instead of a cutie mark he seemed to have had the Ministry Mare Rainbow Dash's cutie mark's outline stamped on his flank, and it looks like it was burnt on.

"What happened to your cutie mark?" I asked with confusion, or rather blurted out.

He let out a deep painful sigh. "I lost it when I became a Dashite," He said with pain in his voice.

"Dashite, what's a Dashite?"

He let out another painful sigh. "A Dashite is a pegasus that has gone against Enclave Law and is cast out of the clouds and forced to live on the surface in exile."

"Against Enclave law? You're a criminal?" Cried out in shock.

He bolted up right and looked at me with fury in his eyes. "No, I am not a criminal Crystal. The worst I ever did was put Mutfruit in some of my cocktails, that was it. I swear. The term Dashite originally was what pegasi who willingly left the Enclave to return to the surface called themselves, and even marked themselves. But the Enclave made a Dashite a punishment, branding and casting out pegasi that broke their laws repeatedly."

"I'm sorry… I didn't mean to offend you Fruity."

He took a deep breath calm himself down. "It's...it's ok. I'm sorry too; I shouldn't have snapped like that, you don't know about the Enclave after all."

"Still, I'm sorry, it wasn't my place to accuse you like that," I said apologetically. "So, what was your cutie mark?"

He gave a weak smile at my question. "It was a pair of cocktail shakers to symbolise my talent in drink mixing and making," His small smile turned into a frown and he looked out the window to the rolling grey clouds that were getting lighter from the rising sun behind them. "I miss my job."

"What was your job?" I asked, hoping to see that smile come back a little more while he talked about something he loved doing.

Thankfully, his smile did come back, if only a little. "I was a bartender at a local cocktail bar. I was rather popular there with my showponyship with how I could mix drinks together and everypony, mostly, would comment on my cocktails being the best in New Reignno." Then his smile disappeared again. "That was until I got busted for serving drinks with Mutfruit in them."

"I'm sorry," I said sadly for bringing up bad memories for him, again. To avoid making things worse, I decided to change the subject away from his past.

So, to fill in the three hours before breakfast I began to ask him other things regarding the wasteland that I have woken up into. I asked about the Crystal Empire, like if it was still there and he told me he didn't know but there had been no records that it was ever attacked and that he had heard rumours, that involved the Empire had tried to help Equestria after the bombs fell but soon abandoned Equestria after all its social structure collapsed. I hope it was still out there.

Fruity asked me about my life before I 'left the Stable' and I had to lie again. Lying was a bad thing, don't ever do it if you can avoid it, really. I felt bad for lying to him but I was still not up to revealing myself to him in fear of scaring him away. I had to think for a moment, but using my past job as a Stable-Tec sales assistance or warehouse operative I was able to come up with a convincing story about working as the Stable's shop keeper and inventory keeper. I could certainly talk bollocks for hours when the right idea pops to mind.

XXXXX

The Pullmare Dining Car is huge. Unlike the passenger car that Fruity and I were using on this journey which was a corridor car with cabins, this dining car was open from wall to wall. I could see that it had a single aisle down the middle between the two gangway doors, and several tables lining both sides apart from the left side where the small kitchen resided and the buffet bar sat, filling the midway point of the sixty foot car.

Looking around, we could see a few ponies sitting at the tables already as well as a couple of ponies acting as waiters. We walked down the aisle and sat at a table around the middle on the right side. The bench I sat on creaked in protest with my weight, I wonder how much I actually weighed now, but thankfully it held, and was just as comfy as our cabin's bench. Like our table in our cabin, the tables in the dining car were also covered in a lace white table cloth and had a brass lamp on them and I found myself staring at the softly glowing gem under the lampshade. I subconsciously licked my lips while I stared, and it was noticed by my pegasus friend.

"Hungry?" He asked innocently.

I shook my head to snap myself out of my stare and gave him my full attention. "Yes," I nodded with a dumb smile.

He turned around and began to wave a waiter down near the door we came in from. While he was occupied I quickly plucked the gem from the lamp and popped it into my mouth, swallowing it as he began to turn back around after getting the waiter's attention. I felt a rush of energy again run through my body as it was processed.

"Power level at 21%."

"May I help you?" The waiter asked in a posh voice as he approached our table.

"Could we have a menu please?" I asked, only just noticing there weren’t any on the table.

"Certainly Ma'am, I'll be back in a moment with your menus," He said, bowing slightly before he turned and headed for the kitchen.

"I hope they do a full Equestrian breakfast," I said out loud to myself. I used to enjoy going out with my parents in Las Pegasus on a weekend morning, usually a Saturday, to one of the local cafes to get a full breakfast.

"I don't care as long as it’s edible," He groaned.

"What do you mean?"

"Half the shit I've scavenged since I started living down here has been sat on the shelves for nearly two centuries. Sure, it's been pumped full of preservatives but in some cases that means naff all and is rotted to hell or you can't just bring yourself to eat two hundred year old junk," He ranted, but yeah, I could understand that. I didn't think I'd be too comfortable trying to eat something that was two hundred years old.

The waiter soon returned with two fancily decorated, yet old and worn menus which also had several items crossed off. I supposed that was because the ingredients were no longer available to acquire in this dead world. The waiter left us once he placed the menus down while saying he’d come back in a few minutes to see if we had decided on anything.

Thankfully a full breakfast was indeed on the menu so I knew what I’d be having. The waiter soon returned to take our order, but Fruity didn't seem to have made his choice yet. He looked to be struggling with the selection available.

"Are you ready to order?" The waiter asked politely.

"Err..." I said looking at Fruity.

He groaned and closed his menu in a huff. "Sod it; I'll have what she's having."

I giggled lightly at that, and turned back to the waiter. "I suppose we'll both have a full breakfast."

The waiter nodded and using his unicorn magic, wrote it down on his little pad.

"And to drink?"

"I'll have a coffee please."

Fruity made a gagging face when I mentioned coffee. Heh, somepony doesn't like coffee; it's a good pick-me-up for early mornings.

"I'll have an apple juice," Fruity said.

"Very good, two full breakfasts, one with a coffee and one with an apple juice," He said out loud to confirm our order and with a nod from me, the waiter headed back to the kitchen.

"What marvellous service," Fruity joked when the waiter was out of earshot. I snickered at his fake posh voice. At least we could still have some fun with how things are right now.

While we waited, I looked out of the large window we had sat next to. I frowned at the sight. I could see nothing but dead land with many dead leafless trees filling the land and the remains of a fence and farm buildings on the small rolling hills. We soon passed over a river running through the farm, and I shivered in disgust as the water was a yellowy green colour that, to me, seemed to actually glow in the low light of the morning. Through the hundreds of twigs I could also see a mountain range in the distance. Hmm, looks like we were starting to enter central Equestria.

"Oh ponyfeathers," Fruity groaned quietly.

"What's wrong?" I asked as I turned to face him, my newly regrown mane flopping into my left eye as I did.

He simply lowered himself down to the table, and then pointed with a wing behind me. I turned to follow his point, and saw three stallions wearing overcoats with black cowpony hats on their heads, standing in the gangway door at the far end. I noticed the middle one more than the others. My eyes roaming over his large muscular frame and the semi-automatic, twelve shell, drum fed, 12-gauge combat shotgun strapped to his back. How in Tartarus did I know that? That was something that was scaring me about my new body, how I seem to know exactly what a weapon is by a single glance.

The three intimidating ponies began to slowly walk down the aisle, until one of the trailing ponies patted the middle one on the shoulder, and then pointed at me. The larger stallion looked at me, and then he immediately scowled with hatred twisting at his features.

"Well what do we have here? It's a little Stripe," He snarled as he approached our table.

"Um, is there a problem here?" I asked, feeling intimidated by him.

"Yeah, there is a problem here, and it’s sitting right in front of me," He sneered. Oh, and there's the flashing exclamation mark.

"Wh-what did I d-do?" I stuttered, moving back instinctively, and plastering my ears against my skull.

"You and your kind aren't welcome here," He growled.

"Oh c'mon dude she..." Fruity's defence was silenced by a powerful hoof slamming onto the table.

"Shut the fuck up Stripe lover," The larger stallion shouted angrily. "You are no fucking different you deserting sack of shit."

"Now hold on a minute!" Fruity tried again but this time, he was met with a hoof to the face. I watched in wide eyed shock as Fruity let out a cry of pain from the strike. I felt a burning desire then and there to lamp the stallion in response, but my fear outweighed that desire. However, I did let out a growl of anger at the unprovoked attack on my friend, but that little act of aggression made the stallion turn his attention back to me.

"You are not welcome here and you are going to leave now before I throw you off this train," He ordered forcefully.

I looked around for help, but found that there were no guards in the car, or any of the other ponies in the car making any attempt to intervene. Whimpering, I looked back at the stallion as he moved closer.

"B-but the train is still moving."

"Well then, I guess I'm going to have to throw you off."

"Is there a problem here?" Shouted a strong, authoritative voice. We all turned our heads to the gangway door towards where we came in, and another large earth stallion stood. He seemed as muscular as the hater in front of me, but also wore a familiar-looking Stable type security armour, familiar because I sold a few for Stable-Tec.

"It doesn't concern you Marshal," The overcoat wearing stallion said as he turned back to me.

"It does when you are threatening ponies on this train!" Marshal shouted as he began to approach us, followed by a familiar looking tiny mare who stayed behind, but very close to the large stallion. My eye's widened when I realised who she was; she was the mare whose daughter I had saved.

"But she's not a pony, she's an it and is about to leave this train by the nearest window."

"Help!" I cried out, frightened.

"This train is neutral ground, she has as much right to travel on it as anypony else," The large earth pony countered as he approached our table. "Now back off and leave her alone, OR, will "I" have to throw "You" off this train?"

The hater growled as he had an internal debate about what he should do. After what seemed like an hour, he sighed. "Fine," He said with a huff before he turned around and began to walk away. "You better watch your back Stripe," He called out as he and his little posse left the dining car. That last shout filled me with a dread.

"Are you two ok?" The Marshal asked.

"Yes, we are fine," I said. "Thank you for getting rid of him."

"Speak for yourself," Fruity whined as he rubbed his now bloody nose "I got sucker punched in the face!"

The Marshal reached into a pocket of his armour and pulled out a healing potion. "Here," He said, dropping it on the table in front of Fruity.

"Thanks," Fruity said as he popped the cork and drank the potion. I watched with fascination as his damaged nose healed up instantly. The pegasus rubbed at his snout and sighed with relief. "So much better."

"Who are those jerks?" I asked.

"I don't know, but there have been several complaints against them since they boarded at Dodge Junction," The large stallion answered. Huh, we must have stopped at a station while I was passed out. "Don't worry, miss. I will see to it that they do not bother you again."

The stallion then looked down to the small mare for a moment. "Do you mind if we join you for a moment, we want to talk to you about what you did for us."

"Um…sure."

Fruity fluttered into the air and over the table before he settled down beside me, our rumps pressing together as he settled into the seat. The contact made me blush slightly.

The Marshal and the small mare took the bench in front of us. Wow, the stallion was like three times the size of the mare.

"My name is Black Slate and I'm this train's Marshal." He then gestured to the small mare. "And this is my wife Tulip Blossom, and she tells me you are responsible for saving our daughter's life during the griffin attack and the fire."

I nodded. "My name is Crystal Éclair." As expected, my name got an eyebrow raise from both of them.

"And I'm Fruity," The purple pegasus announced.

"I'm glad to see you are fine, Tulip told me how horribly burned you were," He said with a relieved smile.

"I guess I drank those potions at the right time," I offered.

The Marshal nodded. "What you did for my wife and I, we can never thank you enough. You brought our daughter back to us even though it put your life on the line. We are forever in your debt."

Tulip nodded her head but then turned to her massive husband. "I'm so sorry Slate," She said with her voice cracking as she began to tear up.

The huge stallion gently held his wife. "Hey, we talked about this, it's not your fault, and you didn't know that would happen."

"I know but I shouldn't gone to the toilet and left her alone."

"Shhh, it's ok, she was sleeping and you could have left her unattended for a couple of minutes, don't keep blaming yourself."

"Where were you when it happened?" Fruity asked. Ouch, Fruity, you shouldn't be asking that. I quickly gave him a shocked look after he said that.

"I was on the far end of the train helping to fend off the griffins; it wasn't until after you rescued our daughter that I became aware just where the fire was."

"Um, we have brought you a couple of things as thanks, it's not much but we thought you could use them," Tulip said quietly.

"Oh you didn't have to," I said just as the small mare lifted two bags onto the table. One of them jingled nosily like it contained coins, or was it caps now? And the other one made a dull clunk like it was full of rocks.

"These two bags have a thousand caps worth between them, this one..." She said indicating the one that jingled. "...has um... how much was it again dear?"

"Seven hundred and fifty caps," Slate answered.

Tulip nodded and then indicated the other bag. "This one contains about um, was it two hundred and fifty caps worth?" She said unsure and looked at her husband. He nodded in reply to her question. She smiled and repeated herself. "This bag contains two hundred and fifty caps worth of gems that we had collected."

Gems! Oh what luck. "Um, thank you," I said with appreciation. I took the back of gems while I passed the bag with caps in over to Fruity.

"What's this for?" He asked, clearly not expecting me to hoof him anything.

"You did pay for my ticket and saved my life before," I said with a big smile. He blinked for a moment then smiled in return as he took the caps.

"I would like to also give you something as thanks as well" Slate said as he bent his head back to a larger pocket on his armour. After a moment of fiddling about, he pulled his head back around with a pistol holster and when he put it down, there was clearly a gun in the holster too. "I believe you lost your gun during the rescue," He said almost matter-of-factly.

"Um, yes, it was a nine millimetre pistol."

He nodded. "Yes, I found it among the wreckage; the fire was hot enough to render it unusable. So I would like to give you this, it has been the best gun I ever had and I hope it'll serve you well. It's called Lucky 13, thirteen because that's how many times it saved my life."

I was about to reject the gun until I remembered what Fruity had told me about Raiders and also from what I've seen and experienced so far. I'd likely need a gun for my protection out in this wasteland. Resigning myself to accept the inevitable, I reached over the table with my forehooves and pulled the holster to me and then gently slipped the gun from its home. I had to admit, it was a beautiful weapon. Oh and there was that familiar tingle in the back of my head.

"Colt-Army .357 Magnum Revolver, six shot cylinder revolving pistol. Weapon has been modified with a longer barrel and refurbished materials increasing weapon's condition and overall damage."

This instantly knowing about these guns was going to drive me crazy. The revolver looked like a piece of art with its black metal finish and intricate golden gild patterns ,as well as the white enamel mouth grip with the number thirteen etched into it, which looked like a more recent addition.

I gave Slate an appreciative smile. "Thank you, I'll be sure to take good care of it."

He smiled and nodded. "You are welcome; it's the least I could give you for saving our daughter."

The mare slipped off the bench. "Yes, thank you ever so much for saving our daughter," She said gratefully.

"I was glad to help," I smiled as they began to walk away.

"Well, that was nice of them," Fruity said while eying the contents of the bag I gave him.

I made an agreeing comment just as our food arrived. It wasn't until after I ate the eggs, hash browns and beans when Fruity told me those were all two hundred years old. That little revelation nearly had me gagging in the middle of the dining car, drawing a few stares. I could have strangled Fruity as he began laughing. At least the breakfast also helped to increase my power percentage by two.

After breakfast, there wasn't much else we could do apart from walking the length of the train, catching a movie in the train's cinema car or having a drink in at the bar. With the way things were looking, it looked like Fruity and I would die of boredom before we made it to the Marejave.

XXXXX

While resting my head on our table in our cabin, I noticed the compass of my EFS start moving. We had been heading in a westerly direction for most of the trip, but now, we were heading north towards the mountain range. Well, this was a train, so we could only go where the track takes us. As Luna's night began to make way for Celestia's day, we were drawing near the Canter Mountain Range in Central Equestria.

"So bored…" Fruity muttered to himself as he tried to make a tower out of his bottle caps.

I opened my mouth to agree when the Conductor's voice blared out of a speaker in the top corner of our cabin near the door.

"Attention passengers, we'll be stopping at Trottingham to restock on flammable material and water. Passengers will have three hours to stretch your legs while we refuel. We will also be passing through Pon'evil shortly. All passengers are to remain in their cabins as we accelerate to our top speed to pass through the town as quickly as possible, thank you."

"Ponyville, what's so bad about that?" I asked confused.

"It's not what you think it is. Ponyville or as it's called now, Pon'evil, is a raider town and one of the worst places you could ever imagine." Fruity then went on to remind me why raiders were to be shot on sight as they would do worse to me if I didn't. Some of the things he told me that he had seen were so horrible, I knew he wasn't making it up. I couldn't image how he felt when he witnessed some of the nasty things he said he had seen.

The train soon accelerated, and minutes later, we were roaring through the destroyed town. Unable to resist the urge to look out the window, I bore witness to public sex, brutal fights involving blunt trauma weapons and other unsightly things. I was thankful my stomach was synthetic because I was sure I would have thrown up at some of the horribleness I saw. While we sped through the town, some of the raiders attempted to attack us and chase us, but there wasn't a chance in Tartarus that they'd be able to run after a hundred plus mile an hour train or hit us.

Thankfully, we passed through the town without incident and stopped in the deserted run down town of Trottingham. It was once a big lively town back before the war, and was famous for its milk. Needing a change in environment, Fruity and I stepped off the train. The silence was eerie and creepy, despite the background noise of the steaming monster and the crews working to refuel it. We walked over to an old engine shed still in view of the train.

"That gun, know how to use it?" Fruity asked as we stepped through the open doors of one of the locomotive bays.

"I know how to use a gun; it's simply pulling the trigger right?"

Fruity nodded. "That's half of it, yeah. Ever used one before though?"

I shook my head.

"Right, since we got some time to kill before we set off again, why don't I teach you how to shoot?"

Normally, I would have declined his offer but I was not in the Equestria I remembered and since waking up in this world it seemed the law had changed to "Kill or be killed" and with my current experience in this world along with everything I've heard or been told, it was like nearly everything would like to rape or kill me, so learning to fight was essential to survival. With a sigh I agreed.

I had the holster strapped around my right foreleg; I bent my neck down so I could get a hold of Lucky 13 with my mouth.

"Using a gun isn't just pointing and pulling the trigger; you need to look down the sights to get your aim. Hmm, ah there, look down the sights and try to hit those tin cans on that buffer stop there."

I nodded, since holding the gun in my mouth and having my tongue against the trigger made it difficult for me to talk. I didn't feel the magical sensation in my mouth for when I put metal or gems in my mouth and I couldn't feel the enamel grip softening or the trigger either. I supposed my mechanical body was programmed to recognise what was edible or not and trigger whatever causes things to become soft in my mouth so I could eat it.

I held the gun tightly in my mouth, the sleek black and gold gilded revolver sticking out to the right side of my muzzle. Closing my left eye, I found that the barrel and the sights of the gun lined up perfectly with my eye, allowing me to get a straight aim.

"Looking down the sights, you'll want to line up your shot so your target is where the top of the middle prong is on your gun barrel. Where that is, is usually where your bullet will go."

I nodded again as I lined up the barrel of Lucky 13 with a can of beans sitting on the bugger stop. Satisfied with my aim, I pulled the trigger with my tongue. I expected there to be some resistance against my tongue, but the trigger pulled easily enough and with a loud bang, the gun fired when the hammer struck the bullet. I was so surprised by the sudden boom and jerk of the gun from the recoi,l that I let go of it and it fell to the rubbish strewn floor.

"You ok?" Fruity asked in concern.

"Yeah I'm fine, it just startled me."

"Ah, you'll get used to it. Heh, the first time I fired my plasma rifles, the magical surge from the discharge had my feathers puffed up for an hour."

I giggled to myself at the mental image of his wings all puffed up.

"Wow, nice shot," Fruity said as he inspected the can. I picked up my new gun and looked over to Fruity to see that the can had exploded and spewed its contents all over the back wall. "How many shots does that gun have?" He asked as he picked up another can from the floor.

"It's a six shot weapon, so it has five rounds left."

"Ok, so let's go five more times; that should be enough for now to give you a good idea of how to use it."

I nodded in agreement and prepared for another shot.

XXXXX

Fruity's advice with my gun was very valuable, his own experiences in the wasteland helping in his explanations with what and what not to do with your gun. Thankfully, maintenance wouldn't be an issue since not only did my electronic brain supply me with all the data on the revolver it also gave me detailed information on how to maintain it.

Fruity seemed rather impressed with my performance in the engine shed. I had hit each can almost dead centre each time. Fruity had asked me if I was sure I hadn't used a gun before and I dismissed it as just being beginners luck, but I feared it had something to do with my mechanical body. I barely felt the recoil of the revolver when I fired it. I supposed my mechanical skeleton could take the forces exerted by the weapon better than if I were entirely organic and I didn't feel like my teeth were gonna fall out from the vibration of the gun fire. I was beginning to feel less and less like a pony with the more things I discovered about my synthetic body.

After target practice, we still had time to kill, so we walked around the ruined train yard that we had stopped in to refuel. I felt I was back in Manehattan while being surrounded by so much destruction and decay. My nose was being assaulted with all the bad smells of nearly two hundred years of decay, and it was absolutely foul. The constant clouds and the nearly collapsed buildings gave a very eerie and dark scene. I for the first time took note of my EFS compass displaying friendly and hostile targets and despite Trottingham apparently being deserted, there were quite a lot of red bars in range of its sensory range. Not wanting to find out what those red bars belonged to, we stayed near the train.

By noon, we were ready to go, and steamed north towards a place called "Zebra Town". Thankfully, the train turned away from the town as it came into view at the foot of Mt Canter. The town had to be one of the creepiest places I had ever seen with how most of it was shrouded in a pink mist. I noticed some pink waterfalls, and following the falls up, I gaped at their source. Canterlot sat up above the town, and I couldn't believe the state of the once famed capital of Equestria, now that was truly a horrifying sight and cemented the claims of the princesses being dead. That was still a fact I am finding hard to accept but every day I woke up to this hell I was beginning to accept it more and more readily.

I was glad that Zebra Town and Canterlot were behind us now as we steamed west. If we made good progress we'd arrive at New Pegasus within a day and a half.

Several hours after we left Trottingham, I decided to go for a walk alone. Fruity wanted to accompany me, but I declined his offer to join me as I wanted some time to myself to get my head around some of the things I had discovered earlier. He was sweet and seems to be very caring despite his immature nature and I do like him, but a mare does need some alone time after all.

I trotted the length of the train, passing through the bar, the dining car and the cinema, also disturbed the movie being shown with my entrance, and continued down towards the front of the train until I stepped out onto the burnt out train car. Most of the roof had collapsed when the fire weakened its upper structure. I had been in my own world with my thoughts about coming to terms with the world I was in now, and that the princesses wouldn't be coming to our aid, when I was brought back to reality as a rather loud door slam startled me.

Looking up at the source, I saw one of the overcoat wearing ponies standing in front of the gangway door, blocking my path. I noticed my EFS again, and the pony blocking the door was showing a red hostile tag on the compass. Not wanting to deal with him, I turned around to walk back the way I came, but as I turned around, the other one closed the door and stood in front of the it, leaving me trapped in the burnt out car. If those two were here then that means...

"I told you to watch your back Zebra scum."

Oh horseapples.

I turned back around to see the large overcoat and black stetson wearing stallion standing in the corridor. My ears flattened against my skull as I shook with fear as his facial expression was screaming bloody murder.

"Please, I don't want any trouble," I whimpered, while taking a step back.

"Well you found trouble," He sneered as he began to approach me. Oh this is bad; my threat warning was blinking in my vision repeatedly. I backed up to keep away from him but as luck would have had it, my butt hit a burnt metal wall where I then stopped, shaking in fear of the huge stallion. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest with my fear; it was still good to feel it beating despite the situation.

"I'm going to kill you Stripe, and then I'm going to throw you off this train," He growled and lifted his left forehoof, pulling it back ready to strike. My threat warning flashed brightly as the stallion began to throw his hoof forward in a punch. I quickly dodged to the left, and his hoof barely missed my head and hit the ruined metal wall behind me. He pulled back and reared up onto his hind legs so he could use both his forehooves, and then he began to throw them in a series of punches. With each throw of his hooves, my threat warning flashed at the point his punches began towards me and it gave me just enough warning to dodge the incoming strikes.

"Hold still!" He yelled in annoyance from my dodging.

In his fury, his attacks sped up, making dodging difficult. Ultimately, one of his punches struck me in the cheek. It stung, but didn't hurt anywhere near as much as I was expecting; it felt more like a gentle slap but my instinctive reaction was to swat his hoof away. I swung my right foreleg out hard and fast to smack his leg away and I felt and HEARD his leg bone break like a twig from my hoof's impact, I really need to learn how to control my mechanical strength. He let out a cry of pain and backed away, holding his damaged foreleg.

"My leg, you fucking bitch, you are dead," He growled painfully and grabbed his combat shotgun off his back with his mouth, and held the gun practically point blank in my face. Eyes widening in fear, I reacted instinctively and grabbed the gun with my hoof, pushing it out of my face just as it fired. The buckshot pelted the wall behind me, leaving a hole behind. Something then clicked in the back of my mind, and all fear seemed to leave me and was replaced with a cold dead feeling of self preservation which made me act. I moved a hind leg forward to better balance myself, and then struck out with my free forehoof into his chest. I tried to dial the strength down a bit, but it was still pretty strong as it knocked him back, along with breaking a few ribs, but I didn't hit him hard enough to kill him, thankfully. I'm not a murder but I'm not a pony or zebra either, am I…?

"You fucking..." I cut him off when I grabbed the shotgun by its mouth grip with my maw, and held the gun pointing at him. His eyes widening at the realisation he was no longer in control of the situation.

"Leave me alone, I didn't do anything wrong, leave, now!" I practically mumbled around the mouth grip.

One of the two other ponies rushed to his friend's aid. "Boss, let's get out here," He said and supported the injured pony.

"Mark my words Stripe, this isn't over" The boss growled painfully as he and his minions retreated.

I stayed still, keeping the shotgun pointed at them until they left through the gangway door. Once I was safe, I dropped the gun and let out a cry from the emotions running through me. Fear, panic, surprise, anger and rage had all rushed through me in the space of a minute. I then looked at my right foreleg, and noticed blood staining my fur. I hit him, I actually hit him. I wasn’t a violent mare by nature, but I also had never been put in a situation where my life depended on my actions. Was that actually me that struck out against him, or was that the machine part of me? Sighing, feeling emotionally drained, I picked up the shotgun again and walked back into the train. I had something to give to the Marshal.

The train became eerily silent as I walked through each car. I could feel dozens of eyes on me as I walked past. I guess they noticed the blood on my foreleg, and most likely the shotgun slung on my back. I tried to ignore the stares as I passed through the cars. After a good ten minutes I finally found the cabin where Slate and his wife Tulip were now using and knocked on the door.

The door opened to a very surprised looking Tulip. "Oh, hello Crystal."

I smiled slightly. "Hi, Tulip, is Slate here?" I asked.

"I am," I heard him confirm as Tulip opened the door wider to allow me entry until...

"OH MY GOSH!" She shrieked upon seeing the blood on my foreleg, and she also seemed to be staring at my cheek. "Are you alright?"

Marshall joined his wife and narrowed his eyes upon seeing the results of the fight. "What happened?"

I sighed. "Those three from breakfast."

"I warned them, " He said angrily and was about to push past me when I held out a foreleg and stopped him.

"It's alright, I dealt with them and here, " I said as I then plucked the shotgun from my back and gave it to the Marshal. "This was the main one's shotgun, it's yours now. Also I don't think he'll be a problem for anyone for a while since I broke his leg and a few ribs, " I informed him regrettably .

He raised an eyebrow. "I didn't know you had it in you," He said.

"Neither did I but he did put me in a corner."

He nodded and took the gun. "Thanks."

Suddenly, the cabin filled with the loud wailing of a foal crying. Tulip quickly rushed to her bench and pulled her baby against her, starting to gently rock the foal back and forth. I smiled happily at seeing the mother with her daughter. A feeling of pride filled my heart. If it weren't for me, this young mother would have lost her baby. I smiled and nodded to them before leaving. Seeing that, seeing the family happy together was just what I needed to life my spirits.

I opened the door to our cabin shortly after my visit with the Marshal to find Fruity fast asleep on his bench. I had to cover my mouth with my hoof to stifle a giggle at what I saw. Fruity had fallen asleep with his chest on the bench and his forelegs out stretched in front of him with his head laying on his legs. His rear end however was high in the air as his hind legs were stood up. I used to have a pet dog that did that. Feeling a little mischievous I reached out with my tail and grasped the handle of the door and quickly yanked it closed, causing it to slam loudly. The result was perfect.

"GAH!!!" Fruity yelled in total surprise as he was rudely awoken by the door slam and shot up into the air and smashed his head against the ceiling, before he drifted back down to the bench holding his head while his wings fluttered.

Even with my hoof over my mouth, I couldn't stop the giggles from escaping as I snickered in amusement.

"Bloody hell Crystal, you scared the living daylights out of me," He whined cutely.

"Hehe, sorry, I couldn't resist, you looked so silly the way you were sleeping."

"I was sleeping with my ass in the air again wasn't I?" He asked with a groan.

I simply nodded.

"Ugh, some guy got the wrong idea about that once."

Oh goddesses. I burst out laughing there. Fruity chuckled too for a moment until he then let out a surprised cry. "Holy shit are you alright?" He asked as he got within my personal space looking closely at my cheek.

"Yeah, I'm fine, why?" I asked.

"You got a big fuck off bruise on your cheek," He explained. "What happened?"

I sighed and pushed him away gently so I could get to my bench and sat down. Fruity settled onto his bench while I told him about my encounter.

XXXXX

Twenty four hours passed, pretty much uneventfully and peacefully. We had left central Equestria behind, and were steaming at high speed into Equestria's desert region which means we were closing in on the Marejave. I felt a little nervousness creep into me as the dead land began to change to that of a more sandy and dry appearance. I was heading home after two hundred years of being away. I didn't know what had become of Las Pegasus; if it was anything like Manehattan then my once bright built up city home would be reduced to a shadow of its former self even if the city still stood. I also fully intend to go and visit my family home in the outskirts of Las Pegasus. I... I just had to see it... and say good bye to my mum. I hope she didn't suffer too much when the end came.

I was woken up early in the morning on the fourth day of our trip as the bright sun shone through our window. Hang on, bright sun light. I quickly sat up and looked out the window, and my eyes were treated to the most beautiful sight since I woke up in Manehattan. The sun: Celestia's heavenly body shining brightly over the horizon in clear blue skies.

I reached over the table and started to prod Fruity while I stared out the window. I could see the cloud cover to our right though, which would be behind us right now, that seemed to just suddenly end like at a boundary.

"I'm up, I'm up," Fruity groaned.

"Look," I said pointing at out the window.

"What am I looking at?"

"A clear sky," I cried almost happily.

The tired pegasus groaned as he turned his head and looked out the window. He yawned loudly. "Yeah? It's a nice sun rise. Sun rises are always lovely in the mornings in the sky."

"Um, Fruity, we’re in a train on the surface, not in the sky."

"Hmm…" He looked out the window again and yawned. "Huh, would you look at that."

"You’re not a morning pony are you?" I asked with a sigh.

"Eenope," He yawned again.

I waited for him to wake up properly before gesturing to the rising sun in the clear sky again. He seemed puzzled and confused at first, but then his face shifted to a look of realisation.

"I suppose the rumours of the SPP Towers not working this far west are true," He said with another yawn.

"The what?" I asked, totally confused.

"You don't know about the Single Pegasus Project?"

I simply shook my head. He then went into a lengthy description about how the project was created during the war and was designed to control the weather. Apparently, it was supposed to hurl hurricanes and other terrible storms at the enemy which would have been very effective. It was also designed to better the weather for Equestria, or it could be used to do what it has been doing since the world ended: create endless clouds to blanket the land and blot out the sun. I was amazed to learn that the clouds around the towers had solid properties to enable the growth of crops to support the pegasi communities. But that then begged the question, why was this region clear of the clouds and I voiced that question to him.

"Hmm, I don't rightly know to be honest, but I heard that there had been some problems with the western towers, and that some hadn't even been finished before the bombs fell," He shrugged.

"Attention passengers, we have now entered the Marejave and will be arriving at New Pegasus within eight hours."

I smiled happily. We were almost there. I could finally... My train of thought was suddenly derailed when a horrific metallic screeching sound reverberated throughout the entire train and I was thrown out my seat and onto the table, which collapsed under my weight. The whole train screeched to a halt.

"What the in the buggery is going on?" Fruity cried out.

"ATTENTION, EVERYPONY ABANDON THE TRAIN IMMEDIATELY, THIS IS NOT A DRILL, ABANDON THE TRAIN!" The Conductor shouted in a panic over the tannoy.

"Abandon the train, what, why?" Fruity asked.

I groaned and picked myself up from the floor. As I stood I looked out the window and saw that we had stopped on a bend, and I could see the engine at the front of the train and it was spewing out steam in places it shouldn't be.

"We better go, like NOW!" I urged.

"What's going on?"

"The locomotive is going to explode!" I yelled and threw the door open, breaking it off its hinges in the process, but at this moment I couldn't be bothered. We ran to the nearest door which was on either side of the gangway door on either end of the car. Thankfully, somepony had already charged out of one and we both ran out into the hot desert air.

We ran, or in Fruity's case flew, until we were at a safe distance from the locomotive. My sensitive ears could pick up the sound of popping rivets. Many ponies were flocking out of the train and scattering around to get to safety; unfortunately a few ponies I could see met a gruesome end when they were shot by a popped rivet.

"Heh, well Crystal, welcome back to the Marejave," Fruity said with a weak smile.

At that moment, the streamlined iron horse exploded in a cloud of steam and fire, violently ripping itself apart along with the tender and most of the brake car behind it. The shockwave flung several ponies, who were unfortunately too close, off their hooves and smashed them against other ponies or into the many large rust coloured rocks lying around. The shockwave passed through me harmlessly, but still had enough of a kick to make Fruity stumble a little.

"Holy hell…" Fruity muttered.

I opened my mouth to agree when my threat warning flashed again. Looking back towards the train I saw a huge piece of metal flying right towards Fruity. I quickly shoved him aside with my right foreleg.

"Crystal, what was tha.." He was cut off when a long piece of steel dug into the dirt between us. "Ahh... fuck."

I sighed with relief that it missed him. I could feel my pulse thundering through my body with the worry and fear I felt for Fruity.

"Are you alright?" I asked looking to see if he was ok.

"Yeah, I'm fine, thanks to you, thank you," He replied thankfully.

"My pleasure," I smiled as I walked around the long piece of steel. The steel was part of the locomotive's drive gear; it was the rod that connected to each of the drive wheels on one side and delivered the power from the cylinders to the wheels. This one piece was so long because it had to connect to three, two metre diameter wheels.

A familiar pony trotted up to us. The Conductor sighed with relief as he saw that we are ok. "Thank Celestia you two are ok."

"Thank you conductor, but what happened, why’d the train explode?" I asked, helping Fruity up.

The middle aged stallion sighed. "When we accelerated to top speed to pass through Pon-evil earlier, the locomotive developed a problem. The crews were being forced to open the safety valves frequently to reduce stream pressure, but the valves soon stopped working. I had been told last night that this would happen if we didn't stop to fix the problem."

"Then why didn't you?" I shouted in anger at this revelation.

"It would have taken at least three days for a replacement engine to come down here to tow us to the depot and another two days hauling us the rest of the way. Time is caps and a fast service attracts more customers. The crews said if they left all safety valves open and reduced the heat of the fire and increased the water to cool it down a little we might have been able to reach Tom City. Stopping there wouldn't have hurt us as much as being left stranded in the middle of the desert."

Money, it's always about money when something like this happens. Ponies scrimp on safety features if it means saving a bit or two here and there. I shook my head and grumbled angrily as Fruity and I stormed off. Good thing we were on a train because that meant we could simply follow the tracks to get to where we were going. As we began walking, we walked passed a stallion in dirty overalls muttering to himself angrily.

"Fucking knew she wasn't ready, fucking rushed her restoration and fucking put her on the line before her trails could be done. Wanting to make headlines with the fastest trans-equestrian travel from west to east and back, you fucking got it because the locomotive we spent twenty years restoring just went boom you fuckers," He ranted to himself, supporting my mental claim on this being all about bits or caps in this world.

The passengers of the train soon scattered into their own travelling groups and headed out in whatever direction they wanted to go. Fruity and I, plus several other ponies who had had the same idea about the tracks followed them through the desert.

As we walked, I concentrated on my Pipbuck and got it to display the map of the region. Thankfully, Tom City was only a few miles away, close enough that we could make it before sunset with a few hours to spare. Many tiring hours of walking later, for Fruity at least, we finally made it to Tom City as the sun began its decent. I gawked at the city or really, town since it wasn't that big, or really what was left of it. The town was absolutely destroyed; only a few buildings at the town's limits were still intact, while everything else was either in disrepair or totally blown to pieces. The middle of the town showed the most of this heavy destruction, with a mountain high wall of rubble sealing it off from the lesser damaged outer limits. I feared a balefire bomb had hit the town, but the damage looked more recent and I couldn't detect any hints of magical radiation.

We walked onto a street that only had one side with intact buildings and these included a bar, which Fruity stood longingly in front of the door too for a while before I had to drag him along, a store and several more buildings that had their doors all boarded up.

"What should we do?" I asked.

"I think it would be a good idea to stock up on supplies," Fruity said while gesturing to the shop with its working neon "Open" sign in the window.

"Good idea."

"You still got that bag of gems?" He asked.

I nodded, though the bag was a lot lighter than it was earlier. I had eaten good few of the gems to get my power cells back to one hundred percen,t but my Pipbuck was still telling me the bag had a considerable value.

We pushed open the door and I immediately had a Whinnychester M1887 Lever-Action 20 gauge Shotgun shoved into my face by an angry looking elderly stallion. I was really starting to hate knowing all these guns at first glance.

"You Stripes thing; you can just walk on in here and help yourself to my stuff, I don't think so," He growled angrily.

"Whoa, hey, pops she's cool, she's with me," Fruity said hoping to defuse the situation.

My vision flickered red for a moment before I closed my eyes and shook with fear, fear of having my head blown off and of the tingling in the back of my head.

"Please don't shoot!" I cried.

The stallion kept the gun pressed to my face for a moment before finally pulling it away. "Sorry, but with the last bunch of zebras you can't be too careful. Anyway, welcome to my humble little shop," The old colt said, doing a one eighty in personality; now, he seemed like a happy go lucky sort of pony. "Bastard's the name, or you can call me Right Bleeding, all my friends do, well, did."

"Why, what happened?" Fruity asked.

I facehoofed, oh, Fruity why did you ask?

"I killed them," The old stallion replied without a change in his current mood. "Now what can I get ya?"

Fruity and I exchanged a look and Fruity lifted a forehoof to his ear, thankfully out of sight of the stallion, and traced a circle in the air and nodded to the stallion. Yeah, I thought he had a screw loose too.

"Um, we’re just here to buy some supplies," I answered.

"Well, I've got pretty much anything, just got these new snacks in: Monkey Toenails, Cheese and Onion flavour." He paused for a moment. "Well… they’re just cheese really and they’re pretty strong."

"No thanks," Fruity and I both said at once. Damn, those sounded revolting.

"We'll have a look and get back to you," I said and mister Bastard nodded and went behind his counter.

Mr Bastard was right that he had pretty much everything, and we picked up plenty of things that should cover us for a while. Boy, what a name, I kinda felt sorry for that old guy.

"Um, excuse me Right Bleeding..." Fruity covered his mouth to stop a snicker from escaping. He quickly calmed himself down so he could finish. "Do you have any changing rooms?"

"Sure kid..." The old stallion stepped out from behind his counter and gestured to the open door behind him. "Just close the curtain."

Fruity nodded and quickly made his way through the curtain with a bundle under his foreleg that I didn't notice him pick up. What was he doing? Thankfully, I didn't have to wait long as he stepped out a minute later dressed in a brown duster that had holes cut into the back to let his wings through and a brown stetson hat rested on his head.

I blinked in confusion. "What are you wearing?" I asked, with a tilt of the head.

"What, we are in the Wild West aren't we? Thought I might as well look the part," He said with a goofy smile.

I couldn't help the smile that spread across my lips. He was so likeable. I looked down at my white and grey striped body, hmm, I suppose a change of clothes was in order since my Stable Suit went up in flames. I had to suppress a shudder at the memory of my suit burning up on my body, and the metal utility belt melting into my hide. Celestia, that was a dumb thing to do. I shook my head firmly and checked out what clothing items were still left. I found a rather skimpy looking nurse’s outfit that made me blush when I picked it up to look at it, and quickly put it back with my cheeks burning at the mental image of myself wearing it swimming around in my head. Practically everything indeed. I picked my way through the other clothing attire until I found a similar outfit to Fruity's.

"Is there a mirror in there?" I asked as I approached with the bundle.

"Yea, though it's a bit cracked."

I nodded and entered the changing room. I first slipped on a faded grey undershirt and then throw on the brown duster. The long coat covered my flank and my tail, though the bottom portion of my tail poked out from under it. Secondly I sat on my haunches in front of the mirror. Thankfully it wasn't cracked too badly; I could at least still see what I'm doing. I reached up with my forehooves and pulled my long mane back so it went between my ears and held it there while I used a free hoof to pluck out a blue braid I had picked up earlier, and then tied my mane back into a ponytail. Lastly, I then slipped a black desperado cowpony hat onto my head with my ears going though two holes so it could sit properly on my head. I took a step back to check myself out, and to straighten my outfit out, after I was happy with it, I smiled to myself. I certainly looked the part now, especially with my revolver sitting in its holster. Satisfied, I stepped out of the changing room.

"Well with that outfit as well, that brings the total up to six hundred and sixty six caps," Bastard said to Fruity as I rejoined him.

"That's a bit steep," I said, a little shocked.

"Steep? Its f-ing vertical."

"Hey, a pony's gotta make a living," Mr Bastard defended. I think I could see why he was called that now.

"Fine…" Fruity moaned as he began fishing out his caps. I did the same with my gems, plucking out a number of gems, while still leaving me with some as I'd need them later.

Right Bleeding Bastard spent a good five minutes estimating the value of the gems I had put down and then he counted the caps Fruity had and gave him back at least three hundred and fifty.

"Pleasure doing business with you," The old pony said as he stuffed the money and gems into a bit register.

"Err thanks."

Fruity and I then spent a few minutes evenly separating the supplies out so we had an equal share, although I got all the .357 Magnum rounds for Lucky 13, and Fruity had bought a combat knife. The dusters seemed to have enchanted pockets, so we could stuff as much of our stuff as we could into the pockets, and yet our coats weren't bulging. I believed the Pipbuck's item sorting spell would be needed to sort out what I wanted to pull out of the pockets in the future.

After making sure we had everything packed away, we bid Mr Bastard farewell and left. We resumed our previous motion of following the rail line. I smiled to myself at the familiarity of the heat of the sun beating down on me, the dryness of the air and the sandy, rocky landscape. It looked as if the Marejave escaped the devastation that had destroyed central and eastern Equestria, I could only hope.

As night fell, so did the temperature and if I thought it was cold in Manehattan during the day, dear Luna it was nothing compared to a desert's night.

"Fuck me it's cold," Fruity whined as a long strand of snot hung from his nose.

"Heh, welcome to the Marejave!" I joked. "And you might want to blow your nose."

He rolled his eyes and wiped his nose with his wing, then flicked it away.

"Ewwwwwwww."

I stopped walking as red bars began to appear in my EFS to our right. I could see movement in the corner of my eye, and it looked to be a big group of things.

"What is it?" Fruity asked as he noticed I had stopped.

"Hostile targets," I said and nodded in the direction of the movement.

Fruity looked and in the low light of the moon I could see Fruity pale. "What did you see?"

"A fuck ton of big lizards and they’re heading this way. And they look hungry," He said, backing away.

I turned and looked, and he was right. I recognised the look of the lizards to be similar to what geckos were like, but these were many times larger. I counted two dozen of them, way too many for us to take on. Looking around frantically, I spotted a building in the distance.

"There, run!" I shouted while pointing in the direction.

My shout alerted the geckos that we had noticed them and they all started to run after us. We galloped as fast as we could, jumping out rocks, jumping a rusty barrier beside a carriageway, jumping a concrete divider, over another barrier, running over more sand and rocks until we made it to the building. My Pipbuck alerted me to discovering the MASA (Marejave, Astronomical Space Agency) Headquarters. That’s where we grinded to a halt. The doors were locked.

Chapter 4: Unexpected Find

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Fallout Equestria
Influx

Chapter 4: Unexpected Find


Predictably, the door to the building was locked and we didn't have time to mess around or search for an alternate entrance because those mutated geckos would be on us in seconds. Fruity slammed into the door in a shoulder barge but the door resisted and he bounced off with a painful moan.

"Ah shit, Luna fuck me sideways that door is solid," He groaned getting back up.

"We haven't got time for this." I cried. I might as well put my mechanical weight to good use and bust this door open myself. I jumped forward, landed on my forehooves and spun around and thrust my hindlegs out in an applebuck against the door knobs. My buck, coupled with the momentum and my weight, overwhelmed the door's lock and it burst open, the two doors slamming into the walls inside.

"Inside." I yelled with urgency.

We both dashed inside as the geckos let out a roar as they continued to chase us. We grabbed a door each and slammed it closed, but because I busted the door's main lock, we couldn't shut it.

"Shit." Fruity whined as he held the door closed.

I looked around frantically for something to barricade the door with, but there was nothing close. However, I then noticed something at the bottom of the door. With hope filling my rapidly beating heart, I looked up and let out a cry of happiness. The door had deadbolts.

"The deadbolts," I cried and jumped at the two at the bottom, quickly grabbing the metal rods and jamming them into their holes in the floor.

"What, yes." Fruity said as he looked up and quickly jammed the pair at the top of the door into place to seal the door.

Once the bolts were locked in place, we then pressed ourselves against the door just as the geckos crashed into it. We dug our hooves into the dirty tiled floor as we held the doors to keep the little monsters out. They bashed and crashed against the door repeatedly for a good ten minutes before they gave up. We listened until we couldn't hear them anymore, before we slumped to the floor panting.

"Phew that was close," Fruity whined as he pulled himself up before he held his hoof out to help me up. Taking his hoof, I pulled myself back up as well.

"Yeah, but we're trapped in here for a while though. I don't think it'll be safe to go back out with those things nearby."

Fruity nodded in agreement as we began to look around the lobby of the MASA Headquarters. The place was a mess, papers and other junk littering the floors and other surfaces. The reception desk was trashed, its terminals broken and smashed and the filing cabinets behind it seemed to be missing all their drawers. In the middle of the room a large model of a rocket stood but looked like someone had beat it with a sledgehammer constantly for weeks with its body all dented and out of shape. We could see several doors in the room, one large door stood open in the far left corner, two doors leading to toilets sat in the back wall and to our right we could see a blue security door with a cardkey terminal on the wall beside it and laying dead in front of the door were four bodies of ponies wearing the same kind of cobbled together armours we know from Raiders.

"The hell happened to them?" Fruity asked no one in particular.

"Beats me." I added, not approaching the bodies. Fruity, on the other hoof, walked up to the corpses and began to root through what possessions they still held.

"What are you doing?" I gasped out in disgust.

Fruity looked up with a confused expression and then looked back down at the corpse that he had his hooves stuffed into the saddlebags of. "Taking their shit, what does it look like?" He deadpanned.

"Have you no respect for the dead?" I asked, shocked.

He looked confused again as he looked down at the dead raiders. "What, these guys?" He asked before giving off a soft laugh. "I'd piss and shit on their graves."

My mouth dropped open in absolute shock, I mean, how can he be so disrespectful to the dead?

"Crystal, these are Raiders. These guys are the worst of the worst, remember, they don't deserve respect. They would happy violate your dead corpse, believe me, I've seen it," He sighed as he finished looting from the raider and moved to the next. "In this world, looting the dead can mean the difference from life or death, the sooner you learn this and accept it the better it'll be, this is a harsh world as you've seen so far. It'll never be easy."

I opened my mouth to argue, but then closed it as I thought back to since I woke up in that stasis pod. He was right. I wasn’t going to like it but he was right about both things. "Alright." I said as I approached the bodies.

"Oh ho ho yeah, jackpot," Fruity suddenly yelled happily as he flipped the dead body of a mare over and pulled a slightly bloody MP12 Plasma Rifle off the floor. "Thank you raiders."

The raider at my hooves was a stallion and seemed to have had been armed with a Colt-Army .357 Revolver as one lay beside his corpse. Upon inspecting his body, I pulled his armour off his chest and found him riddled with small holes. My vision flashed red as squares began to appear and highlighted the multiple holes, in total thirty nine separate holes were punched into his chest. I heard a beep inside my head and then a report appeared in my vision. I swear this'll drive me mad one day.

"Analysis complete: Puncher wounds caused by anti-infantry ammunition of 5mm. Likely weapon of use, Ironshod XM214 Minigun" That doesn't sound good. What in here could possibly use such a mean sounding weapon? I looked at the other corpses and they all had multiple puncher wounds in their chests and lots of them. All the corpses also were facing the door which told me that whatever killed them was behind that door. A spark caught my attention from the card reader and it looked like it had been tampered with. I suppose the raiders tried to force their way through the door and probably triggered the security system since it was a security door.

"Apart from the Plasma Rifle, these guys had jack shit. Sure, there were a couple of pistols and a ton of drugs but nothing much useful," Fruity sighed as he pocketed the things he found on the other corpses while I pocketed what I found on the stallion. Beside the revolver I found a hooful of ammunition, a couple syringes of Med-X, a bottle of Buckout and something called Hydra.

"Wait a minute," I looked back up at Fruity who was now examining his salvaged rifle closely. "Ah bollocks, the trigger system's fucked." He slumped sadly. He shook his head and tore a long strip of fabric from one of the raider's armour to create a strap and tied it to both ends of the useless Plasma Rifle and slung onto his back.

"Why are you carrying it if its trigger won't work?" I asked.

He shrugged as he stood. "Could sell it to a merchant or if we're lucky we might find another one somewhere to repair this one with." Fair enough I suppose. Fruity walked up to the door and lifted a hoof to press at the terminal. Not good.

"Whoa wait," I cried out.

"Huh, what is it?"

"These guys," I said gesturing to the dead raiders. "They must have been tampering with the card reader and set off some sort of security. Whatever killed them came from behind that door."

The purple pegasus looked from the raiders and to the door a few times before backing away from the damaged card reader.

"So little miss zebra, what should we do while we wait for those geckos to bugger off?"

"Hmm, well we could explore this place, you never know we might find something useful," I suggested.

"Heh, better than doing nothing I guess."

I smiled softly, nodded and began to trot towards the open double doors in the far left of the room. The door opened up into what looked to be the beginning of a museum full of containers and barrels.

"What is this place?" Fruity asked with a raised eyebrow as he looked over the room.

"Um, the MASA Headquarters, a place that deals with space," I answered while also taking in the odd museum like room, I couldn't help the feeling of familiarity washing over me. It felt like I've been here before.

"Plasma?" Fruity questioned as he stepped up to an exhibit with several containers full of glowing liquid of different colours. "What does plasma have to do with space exploration?"

"I dunno." I replied and stepped into the museum. Suddenly a security shutter slammed down over the door, blocking our exit.

"What the hell?" Fruity cried as he spun around to face me.

I looked back in shock at how close that shutter had been on slamming down on my backside. "I think the security is still active…" I whimpered.

CLUNK!

We spun around to face the sudden sound and saw that a section of the far wall between two exhibits had moved back slightly.

"Now what?" Fruity asked as he rejoined me.

Just as soon as he finished his question the sunken wall segment slid to the side to reveal a secret compartment, which contained a big robot.

"F-Fruity, what is, what is that?" I whimpered fearfully.

Fruity's eyes widened in horror as they tracked pony robot moved into the museum. It looked like a robot pony painted in military green and mounted on a set of tracks and appeared to be armed with a minigun and a missile launcher. I guess we know what killed those raiders now.

"It's a Sentry Drone," Fruity whispered.

"That's bad isn't it?" I asked while feeling my knees start to quake. Fruity simply nodded in reply.

"Intruders detected, lethal force authorised." It droned out as it rolled out of its hidden room. Yep, definitely not good.

"SCATTER!" Fruity yelled suddenly and beat his wings hard, lifting off the floor and zipping out the door next to the robot leading deeper into the building.

"Fruity!" I cried out in shock and disbelief. The robot didn't follow the fleeing pegasus as its focus appeared to be solely on me.

"Priority target identified, Zebra scum." The machine droned out as its minigun began to spin.

"Oh no." I quickly dove behind an exhibit platform, which had a model of a mound of dirt with a bunch of small barrels sticking out of it. I slid on the dirty floor until I stopped behind the exhibit as the machine began to spray bullets wildly and at high speed around where I had been standing moments before. I held my head in my forehooves as the machine proceeded to destroy the exhibit with its hail of bullets while it turned to follow me. Oh Fruity, why did you leave me?

The hail of lead stopped and the sound of the machine's tracks grated against the floor as it began to move replaced the minigun's soundtrack. The bucket of bolts was after me! Whimpering in fear, I crouched as low as I could go and moved around the exhibit to stay out of the machine's field of view. I couldn't fight it, there was no way I could destroy it with Lucky 13 and its minigun and missile launcher would probably destroy my body before I could even get close to it. I have no idea how durable my endoskeleton after all so I can't risk going hoof to hoof with it. Oh Fruity, where are you?

I peeked around the next corner. I could see the door Fruity had flown off through and that the machine wasn't in my line of sight which meant it was now behind me. Suddenly, Fruity landed in the threshold of the door and he seemed to be holding a small cylindrical object in one of his wings.

"Hey, rust bucket!" Fruity yelled to get the robot's attention. "Catch!" He then unfurled his wing quickly and flung the object he held into the room and at the machine. "Crystal, run!"

Only one thing came to mind to what Fruity had thrown for him to yell at me to run and that was a grenade. I pushed myself up onto my hooves and began to run as fast as I could towards Fruity, my hooves slipped a few times on the dirty floor which threatened to trip me up as I ran. The machine's minigun began to fire again and I felt a round punch into my hind leg as I dove through the threshold. I crashed onto my stomach again when a bright blue flash filled my vision which was followed by a burst of crackling electricity. I pushed myself back up onto my hooves and winced at the biting pain in my injured leg and then I groaned as I had a sudden wave of vertigo, along with my eye sight flickering and momentarily going deaf.

"Warning, disruption field detected." Flashed into my vision in red.

Disruption field, what?

"Disruption field... Negative." Flashed again but in green. Whatever this Disruption Field is, it messed with the mechanics of my mechanical body.

"Hey, are you alright, you looked like you were gonna puke!" Fruity asked in concern and it was then I realised he was holding me with his forehooves on my shoulders.

I shook my head to clear myself of the sudden vertigo and looked at my concerned pegasus friend. "Ugh, yeah I'm fine. What did you do?" I asked, feeling concerned about whatever Fruity had used as whatever it was affected me as well.

He gave a cocky smile. "I just fried that bitch with a Disruption Grenade," I tilted my head in confusion since I didn't know what one of those was. His smile faded as he realised I didn't understand what he was talking about. "Oh right, stable po... err, zebra. It's basically a magic grenade that fries the electronics of machinery."

I had a sudden realisation, which I kept from making my eyes go wide. I didn't know what it was that Fruity had thrown, I had guessed it was a grenade but I didn't get that tingling feeling in the back of my head and the influx of knowledge that usually accompanied it. I suppose I don't know every weapon after all. Thank Celestia.

"Oh." I felt dread fill my heart at what one of those grenades could mean for me. If I were still in that room when that thing went off I'd likely be dead as one of those grenades could possibly shut my body down for good.

"Is that why you flew off on me?" I asked, sounding hurt.

He wilted slightly at the hurt in my voice. "Yeah, sorry. I knew had one and needed a moment to find it."

Looking back into the room, we saw that the robot had indeed been fried as it was standing in the middle of the room, leaning slightly to one side with all its weapons pointing to the floor and smoke seeping out of several places. The spent grenade's casing lay at its tracks. I definitely do not want to be anywhere near one of those things when they go off.

"Where did you get that anyway?" I asked.

"One of those raiders I searched had one funnily enough."

We approached the sealed door and began to examine the shutter that had come down when we entered the museum. It was one of those high security shutters that were designed to lock in place once down and strong enough to take severe punishment. These shutters were likely installed to prevent thefts from the museum, but the Sentry Drone…that seemed a little excessive.

"There is no way we are getting out through here, looks like we have to trek further into the building," Fruity sighed as we turned to find an alternate exit. "We get ourselves out of one mess and into another,"

"Tell me about it." I groaned as we entered the next room of the museum. This room held exhibits of model rockets, and tucked away in the far left corner, there appeared to be a display platform showing a large dome.

"Oooh?" Mused the pegasus, eyes alight as the details of the scale rocket models crossed his view.

I, however, was hit with another wave of familiarity. This was bugging me now. This place felt so familiar but I just couldn't place it. We trotted into the rocket exhibit, Fruity admiring the many models of rockets that had once been used to send satellites or ponies into space, while I, on the other hoof, was preoccupied with my sense of déjà-vu. I stopped, closed my eyes and shook my head trying to clear it. Upon opening my eyes I found myself standing before the dome and its exhibit tablet.

"MASA Test Site Launch Facility." My eyes widened as it suddenly clicked.

A group of fillies and colts crowded around the exhibits in an excited manner while their teacher tried and failed to get their attention or to get them to calm down while on their school trip to the MASA Headquarters' Public Museum Floor. There was, however just one pale pink filly who stood off to one side to be away from the hazards running amuck. Ever since her short tumble down a few steps at school which resulted in breaking her leg the filly kept a good distance from other fillies and colts that were moving quickly that could result in a crash or a bump into her and risk injuring her again. The teacher, a mulberry earth pony mare by the name of Cheerilee, groaned as she stood close to the pale filly.

"Why did I agree to substitute on my vacation?" She asked herself. "The little ponies back home were never this disobedient or obstructive."

The adult mare looked down at the young filly. "Are you doing ok, Crystal?" She asked with concern; she had been made aware of the filly's medical problems before the trip. The small pink filly nodded with a weak smile as she felt safer with the teacher. The mulberry mare turned around to the exhibit behind her. "Well, at least I can still teach one student," The mare said with a smile as she began to explain what the exhibit of the dome meant. "This is a model of the dome at the MASA Test Site a few miles south of here and..."

I blinked as the sudden flashback faded back to memory and looked down at the floor. A hundred and ninety five years ago, I stood here during a school trip. I smiled weakly at the reminder that I thankfully still had my memories after whatever happened to me.

"NO FUCKING WAY!" Fruity yelled suddenly. I squeaked in surprise and spun around to find him standing before a model of a rocket motor. "This engine is what the current Enclave Raptor propulsion engines are based on."

I joined my excited friend and looked down at the plaque sitting on its stand. "Revolutionary Plasma WRX-374 Rocket Motor..." The rest of the plague unfortunately was unintelligible.

"What's an Enclave Raptor?" I asked looking to my purple friend.

"Oh err, a flying battleship, pretty much," He replied hesitantly. That didn't sound good for the ground dwellers like us. "You... um, don't really need to, err, worry about those right now," That didn't exactly fill me with much confidence. "Shall we move on?" He said in more of a statement rather than a question as he turned away from the model and to a set of double doors and shutting down any chance to continue the Raptor conversation for now. Well I suppose any subject on the Enclave would be a sore topic for him considering what they did to him.

He pushed open the doors to reveal a room full of...

"ROBOTS!" I screamed and dove for cover behind the wall outside the room.

Fruity started to chuckle, which devolved into a full on hysterical laugh. I glared daggers at him as he laughed.

After a good minute he finally calmed down but continued to smirk. I pouted as he tried to regain his self control. "I'm sorry, but that... *snicker* was just hilarious,"

I hesitantly peeked around the door frame to see the room full of rusty old defunct robots of various models and purposes. I sighed with relief and looked back up at my still snickering pegasus friend and a light in my HUD caught my eye. Focusing on what caught my attention I realised it was my compass, but the light I saw was just a single white bar exactly where Fruity is standing. In that instant I internally facehoofed and felt embarrassed at my earlier reaction to seeing the robots as I had completely forgotten about my EFS and that the compass could identify friend from foe.

"I'm such a featherbrain," I groaned, actually facehooving this time.

"Huh?"

"I completely forgot about my EFS," I clarified.

"Oh, so, is it safe?" He asked, gesturing to the robot filled room with a wing.

I stepped back up to be at his side again and surveyed the room. The compass in my lower left vision shifted but remained empty of any threats but I had a niggling feeling that it wasn't going to be empty for long. "Seems clear." I said as I took the first step into the room.

The robots all looked old, well of course they were, like me they were all over a hundred and ninety years old but what I mean was, back in my time, these seem like old models of the robots we were familiar with now. To my left was a rather large four legged pony like robot with two huge miniguns that looks like a predecessor to the Sentry Drone we are very familiar with. One robot on the right towards the top corner looked like one of those spider leg like hovering bots and one robot sitting next to the open door on the right resembled a sprite-bot but what stood out the most about it was the ridiculously huge antenna sticking out its head that looked like the sort of antenna you'd see on a roof for catching television signals.

We entered the room and like when we first entered the museum, a security shutter slammed down behind us.

"Ah, son of a bitch!" Fruity exclaimed jumping forward and tucked his tail between his legs.

"Are you alright?" I asked, looking from him to the shutter and back.

"That bastard took a chunk out my tail." He whined. Sure enough when examining the shutter a little closer I could see a tuff of purple hair stuck under it.

CLUNK! CLUNK!

We froze and slowly turned our heads towards the back wall where two sections of the wall had shifted backwards between two display stands.

"I don't suppose you have any more of those grenades do you, Fruity?" I asked with fear gripping my words.

"Sorry, all out." He replied, looking just as nervous as I was.

The two sections of wall slid aside to reveal two Sentry Drones but only one of them seemed to be active as it rolled out of its hiding place. The other drone looked as defunct as the display robots.

"Intruder alert, engaging hostile targets."

"I don't have enough bullets for the two pistols I picked up to even do anything to that but you got plenty for that revolver of yours. You have a Pipbuck, so use SATS and shoot something vital, I'm gonna act as cannon fodder to give you a clear shot," Fruity said just as nervously as before.

"Are you insane?" I shrieked. "That thing will..."

"High priority target identified. Die you striped son of a bitch!"

"AHHHHH!" I screamed as the machine's twin miniguns opened up and I ran for the nearest cover which was a gap between the old model sentry and the wall. There was one thing I knew for certain right now, I HATE THIS PLACE.

"Oi, you glorified toaster, ya mother was a dish washer and your father was a rubbish compactor," Fruity yelled from somewhere above. Yeah, like throwing insults at a robot will get you a reaction, they don't have feelings. I could hear bullets now pounding into the display robot above me as the machine kept firing. "Hey, I'm talking to you." I just about heard over the roar of the miniguns a faint pop and suddenly the gunfire stopped.

"Armed target detected, threat priority target."

"Crystal, shoot it now!" Fruity yelled as he began to fly around to the room. The hulking robot had turned its back to me as I peeked out from behind my cover. Fruity was doing his best flying around the open space around the top of the room to keep the machine occupied. C'mon Crystal, he's giving you a chance. I grabbed the revolver from its holster and held it tightly in my mouth and looked to the machine nervously. I quickly stole a glance at my Pipbuck and then back at the robot and concentrated on the Stable-Tec Arcane Targeting Spell built into the device. Suddenly everything seemed to freeze as if time had stopped. Fruity was in the middle of doing a barrel roll while avoiding two streams of five millimetre bullets. The robot had turned slightly giving me a good view of one of its two miniguns and plenty of places to shoot. The robot became surrounded in a white aura and then separated into multiple segments, tracks, body, guns, head and a small square at the back of the machine's neck which when I focused on it said it was called the "Combat Inhibitor", well that looked important. It seemed I would also have a ninety five percent chance of hitting it which was good, I wasn't that far from it so I could understand the good chance but I wouldn't be surprised if my being a bio-mechanical zebra had anything to do with it also and poured all the action mana points I could into the spell. The spell queued up three shots and I ended the process and time began to flow again. I hope this works. Through the effects of SATS I pulled the trigger on Lucky 13 three times in quick succession, firing off three .357 magnum rounds and with my mechanical vision I was able to see two of the three bullets impact the small plate covering which shortly afterwards began to spark and fizz. I guess I hit something vital.

Fruity looped around when the machine's rapid gunfire cut out all of a sudden and landed back on the floor beside me. "You got it," He said with surprise.

"I hope so." I replied, while watching the machine as sparks began to fly from the damaged inhibitor. I have a bad feeling about this.

The panel covering the inhibitor suddenly blew off the machine with a puff of black smoke and the drone began to move and resume firing its guns. The drone was moving in random directions and shooting anywhere, both its miniguns were aiming in entirely different directions, not practically aiming at anything really, just firing randomly, the thing was going completely crazy.

"Err, what did you shoot?" Fruity asked as we dove for cover behind the same prototype sentry drone model as I did earlier.

"Um, the Combat Inhibitor," I answered.

Fruity facehoofed and groaned. "Oh ponyfeathers, that thing will be on total rampage,"

"Give me a break, I've only been in the wasteland for the best part of a day or two," Fruity opened his mouth to retort and I suspected he'd mention the week on the train. "The train ride don't count," I quickly added to which he shut his mouth. "So, what do we do now?"

"We make a break for the Planetarium..." He said while gesturing to the door with a sign hanging from the ceiling saying Planetarium. "...with it going barmy it won't focus on us, too busy pissing bullets at the walls or ceiling to care about us," He moved around to the other side closer to the left wall where the only open door in the room sat. "Just gotta time it right."

I rose up slightly so I could see over the display platform. The drone was crashing into the other exhibits while it continued to fire. It drove into another stand and ground its tracks as if it was trying to push the stand. Fruity tugged on my foreleg, getting my attention and then nodded to the door. Sharing a nod we quickly ran for it. Unfortunately, the machine got itself unstuck and turned around firing.

"Oh fuck!" Fruity cried as he dropped when we ran through the door.

I let out a pained cry as I felt several pains bite into my flanks as the machine's bullets found a target, but thankfully only a few hit, though it still hurt. As soon as we were both through the door, another shutter slammed down locking us in the planetarium. We held our breaths for a short while, waiting for the clunking sound that usually accompanies the shutters but this time around there wasn't one. We both let out a sigh of relief and slumped to the floor while we could still hear the drone behind the shutter going nuts.

"Hey, you good?" Fruity asked?

"Hmm, I think it got me," I replied with a groan.

"Where?"

"My butt,"

"Mind if I have a look?"

"I beg your pardon?" I cried out, my face tinged with a blush as I couldn't believe he just asked that.

"Whoa, hey, I meant the wound, not your plot," He said waving his forelegs defensively. "I swear,"

I eyed him for a moment before turning my head again and groaned. "Ok." I said, trusting his word.

I felt the long coat of my duster being shifted off my flanks, bringing a fresh wave of pain as the movement of fabric irritated the bullet wounds which made me grit my teeth and hiss.

"Damn girl, you got ten holes in your ass," Fruity said sounding impressed. "Getting shot in the ass ten times would put even a big stallion like that prick Biceps down for good, you are lucky," Luck has nothing to do with it Fruity. "The wounds don't look that bad, a healing potion should take care of that, oh and the hole in your leg too, I'm surprised you could walk and run without the pain driving you mad,"

"I got a high pain threshold," I threw out there, hoping he'd accept it.

"Hah, no shit." He laughed before an ominous moaning sound echoed throughout the large open room. The Planetarium was a huge room painted black and speckled with white dots to simulate stars and in the middle hanging from the ceiling was a model of the Equus Solar System. The large orange sun was the only source of illumination in the room. I smiled to myself as this room looked exactly the same as the last time I saw it as a little filly.

"What in the fuck was that?" Fruity asked fearfully as he looked around for the source of the moaning noise.

"Don't worry, it's the ambient music for this room, a whale song I believe, was suppose to give a sense of atmosphere," I replied automatically as I stood back up started for a blue door I saw on the other side of the room while also fishing out a healing potion from my duster's pocket.

"How do you know that?" I froze, Oh Celestia I can't believe I blew my trap like that (By trap I meant my mouth). I need to think fast, um...

"I read it in an old magazine once in my Stable's old stores," I quickly responded. I felt so bad lying to him.

"Ok." He said slowly. Oh no, he doesn't believe me. I held my breath while I expected him to question me further but nothing came. He either accepted it or has decided to let it slide for now. Oh, I want to tell him the truth, I really do but I'm so scared of what the outcome would be. I don't want the only pony I've come to like see me as a machine or a monster. I shivered at the thought of losing him to my condition.

The blue door opened up to a stairwell, it was dark inside. That's never a good sign.

BANG!

"Now what?" Fruity whined as we whirled around.

Surveying the star speckled walls in the planetarium, it was nearly impossible to see where the corners of the room were or if the room itself was square but thankfully the dull light from the model sun reveal a section of wall that was slightly bowed out thanks to it being oddly shaded.

"Oh come on, just how many drones does this place have?" Fruity cried out in annoyance. I shared his annoyance. Why did this place have such things for museum security? It just felt a little overkill for that. I guess we now knew why we didn't hear the clunking sound like before, the door for this drone failed to open.

"Apparently a lot," I deadpanned as another bang rung out and the bowing section of wall slid out a little more. "C'mon, let's keep moving before it sees us."

The purple stallion nodded and we made our way inside the stairway. I reached out with my tail, wrapping the hairs around the door handle and pulled the door closed quietly as not to alert the robot where we are and... I stopped and blinked as I looked back at the now closed door to see my tail wrapped around the handle. A flash back to my nightmare flashed into my head, where I used my tail to grab a hold of the Crystal Heart thanks to something in my tail hairs. Nano-Fibres! If it's true, I have Nano-Fibres then, could that mean... Oh sweet mother of Luna please no, that nightmare couldn't have been real, it just couldn't.

I was brought out of my horrible thoughts as Fruity knocked on my metal forehead. "Hello, Equus to Crystal are you there?" He asked and waved his hoof in front of my eyes.

"Huh, what?"

"You spaced out on me there, are you ok?" He asked in concern.

"Yeah I'm fine," I replied with an obviously fake Pinkie Pie smile as I headed up the stairs and into what looked like a control room of sorts.

"Crystal, you can tell me if something is bothering you, you know, I want to help, your my friend," Damn it Fruity, stab me in the heart why don't you. Ohhh, I really want to tell you what's wrong but I... I can't.

"I'm fine really, I think this wasteland is getting to me, I, um, have spent my life, err, in isolation after all," Poor response there Crystal, poor response.

"Alright, but please, don't bottle it up, it'll drive ya nuts."

I nodded and smiled at him. The control room was dark and wasn't much to look at as most of the room was made up of rusty machinery and a couple of control panels. Unfortunately it wasn't the sort of control room I was hoping it would be, by that I mean security. This room was most likely the control room for the Planetarium.

"Whoa, watch out!" Fruity said as he bit down on my tail and yanked me back slightly, making me cry out from the sudden pain at the tug.

"Ow, hey," I whined, shaking my tail once he released it.

"Sorry, but you nearly stepped on a dead body," Fruity responded bluntly.

"I what?" I shrieked and jumped back. Sure enough, slumped against one control panel lay a long dead skeleton of a pony which still wore the tatters of what had once been a MASA jumpsuit. I looked over the skeleton in horror as it brought back memories of my first day outside of that stasis chamber. No, pull yourself together Crystal. I shook my head to jar the horrible memories away. With a clearer head I noticed something under the hoof that was resting on the control panel. "Hey, I see something under its hoof."

Fruity looked over to the skeleton and clocked onto what I had seen and fluttered over the bones to land on the control panel and gently, as to not disturb the skeleton too much, pulled the flat red object from under its hoof.

"You'll never guess what I just found," Fruity said in bafflement.

"What, the security key?" I asked with a hint of sarcasm.

"Eeyup," I gave him a disbelieving look. "No seriously, look," The pegasus flapped his wings and jumped over the skeleton and landed gracefully in front of me holding the small red card by his teeth. He wasn't kidding, the card was indeed a security key. According to the card it was an Lv2 Security Key. Huh, what were the chances of finding the security key in this place just lying there for anyone to see? Ten to one, hundred to one, million to one?

"We'll likely need that, keep a hold of it Fruity." I said with a smile at the stroke of good luck. He nodded and tucked the card into one of his duster's pockets.

We approached the only door in the room and Fruity pulled the door open. He immediately balked and gagged as he stumbled backwards away from the door. However before I could ask what was wrong I found out. The smell that came through the open door was overwhelming. It was a reminder of my first waking hours in the wasteland when surrounded by death. The stench of rotting flesh.

"Holy... ugh, damn, who died?" Fruity whined.

"Everypony," I deadpanned.

"What I'd give for a peg right about now." Fruity said to himself as we entered the hallway of what looked to be the office floor for the MASA HQ from the style of the deteriorated decor.

We chose a direction at random and began to trot quietly down the hall to the right. I took note of Fruity's ears, which were twitching every so often and moving around as if listening out for anything out of the ordinary and I found myself subconsciously doing the same. The second floor was very dark and dank, perfect for hidden horrors to lurk. I quickly glanced down to the bottom left of my HUD and balked for a second at the number of red bars filling the compass.

We stopped as we came to a T-junction, to the left the hallway would take us deeper into the building but according to the sign on the wall, the path to the right would take us to some stairs that would lead us to the lobby as the sign shown "Lobby" with an arrow pointing down the right path.

There was suddenly a crash, and the sound of breaking would and the sound of something being thrown hard and striking something somewhere in the building. Maybe that rampaging sentry just broke something.

"Let's just get the hell out of here." Fruity said and we quickly began to trot towards the stairs. Our hopes of finding our way back down died when we came to the stairs. The stairs were completely filled in with rubble which looked to have fallen through the ceiling. "Ah, bollocks!" Fruity whined.

My threat warning flashed into my vision and that was quickly followed by a hideous hissing growl from down the hall. We whirled around to see a pony stumble into view. No, wait, it wasn’t a pony, it was a ghoul.

"Z...z...zombie," I whimpered stepping back as the undead creature turned to face us, its lifeless dead eyes boring into mine. It opened its hole riddled mouth, its broken and rotten yellow teeth being put on show as it let out a lifeless but feral roar and began to approach us at a quick trot. I suppose with how degraded its body was, the zombie couldn't manage much more than that.

"Cr...Crystal, you, you gotta shoot it," Fruity urged as he pulled his serrated combat knife from its sheath on his left foreleg.

"B...but it's a... a zombie," I whimpered fearfully, my knees shaking with my fear.

"It's a feral ghoul, it was once a pony like me and you, you gotta kill it, you'd be doing that poor soul a favour by putting it down, now shoot it, the quicker you learn this shit the better we'll be in the wasteland." Fruity yelled over the mouth grip of his knife.

He was right, this wasn't the semi-peaceful world I grew up in. It was a horrible and violent world full of monsters and bad ponies and other nasty things that'll likely kill you if you look at them funny. But, would I still be a good pony, or Zebra, if I kill, could I still be good if I kill others to survive? We'll find out in the future...

I pulled Lucky 13 from its holster and clamped my jaws around the grip. The monster by now was only a few feet from us and I had no alternative so I steeled my nerves and pulled the trigger repeatedly, until the hammer of the revolver was hitting empty chambers. All but one of my shots hit the undead pony. My enhanced vision caught the impacts of the five .357 magnum rounds as they punched into the ghoul. One in the chest, one in the shoulder, one in the neck and two in the head to which its skull exploded in a shower of gore which disgustingly enough, speckled me with bits of rotting brain matter.

"Eww, get it off, get it off!" I shrieked in a rather girly fashion.

"Hold still," Fruity commanded. I closed my eyes and didn't move, too creeped out to consider moving and not wanting to dislodge the rotting organic matter now speckled all over my face. A shiver ran down my spine when I felt Fruity delicately use his wing to brush at my face, his surprisingly soft feathers flicking away the bits that landed on me. His wing also brushed over my hat as I could hear the feather grinding against the rough fabric of the old Stetson. "There, all better,"

"Thank you." I sighed with relief but internally I had conflicting emotions about what I just did. A part of me was mortified that I just killed something but a primal part of me was glad I did. This is going to take a while to get used to and I've not fully gotten used to my mechanical body yet either as it keeps springing something new upon me.

I sat on my haunches and held Lucky 13 in one forehoof while I pushed out the cylinder with the other and then tipped the gun vertically so the spent shells could fall to the floor. Once the cylinder was empty, I reached into one of the deep pockets of my duster where I had put all the ammo I had acquired. Focusing on the item sorting spell in the pipbuck with my mind I willed the .357 magnum rounds to the top. I felt my hoof collide with a speed loader and upon pulling it out, I found that it had six bullets arranged so that I could push all six in at once. Thankful that I wasn't going to have to manually put each bullet in the cylinder one by one, I inserted the bullets and pushed the plunger so all six bullets were deposited into the revolver and then put the loader back into my pocket and snapped the gun closed now fully reloaded and then put that back into its holster.

"We're gonna need to find another way out," Fruity sighed with a hint of annoyance in his voice. "There's gotta be another way down."

I nodded my agreement and we began up the corridor, deeper into the building.

The second floor was a right mess. As we walked the halls, we saw that some walls had collapsed giving us easy access into other office spaces or the rest rooms, to which the back wall to one of the toilets had collapsed, opening a way into a room with a computer.

I was still taken aback with the level of damage everything had taken from nearly two hundred years of no maintenance. This was still a big change for me considering everything I remembered was pristine and intact. So much had changed. I sighed deeply as again I was reminded that I was no longer in the world I knew.

As we walked the halls and explored the offices while we tried to find our way out, we encountered more ghouls. Some of these undead monsters I was able to see in some of the still working lights and was able to see that they were wearing the remnants of what used to be their uniforms. They used to work here. Fruity was right, killing them is the best thing we can do for them. Fruity reminded me while we explored that a Feral Ghoul is a Ghoul who had lost their mind completely. How bad could it be too loose yourself, to feel you mind slipping? After thinking about it more and with those reasoning's, the most equine thing to do is to put them down. We did encounter a few more as we moved deeper and killing them got easier after each one. Deep down I was scared about that because I could feel a part of me that seemed to enjoy it, the thrill of the battle or the use of a firearm. What scared me more about that though is that I didn’t know if it was ME or the MACHINE since part of my brain is synthetic. I still didn't know just what had been done to me, for all I knew whoever built me could have programmed me to like violence. That in itself was a horrifying possibility.

We covered about half the second floor before we found a way up to the third floor. We opened a door to what looked like a staff room as there were lockers against one wall, a fridge next to the door and a table in the middle of the room. However the ceiling to most of the room had collapsed, crushing a lot of what was already in here to begin with and a section of the fallen ceiling made a ramp up to a door in the room above but to get to it we would have to get through three more ghouls.

"Just how many of you buggers are there?" Fruity asked rhetorically.

I groaned as I pulled Lucky out of its holster. I had used thirty bullets since we got here and I was down to my last three speed loads of six bullets. I could hit a stationary target no problem, but a moving target, whole different thing.

"I got the one on the right." Fruity said as he branded his bloodied knife and flew at a ghoul who hadn't noticed us yet.

I nodded and took aim at the closer of the remaining two ghouls and fired two shots. Both shots missed by a mile as the bony ghoul limped and turned to face me. The ghoul opened its mouth to let out its bellow and I fired another two rounds. The first grazed the bony remains of the ghoul's nose but the second bullet flew into the ghoul's decayed mouth and blew the creature's brains out the back of its head. The ghoul collapsed into a heap on the rubble strewn floor with a massive hole in the back of its head. I cringed at the horrible sight, my lapse in concentration allowed the last ghoul to gain ground and I failed to notice the flashing warning light in my EFS until it was too late.

I felt a heavy thud collide with my side, making me stumble sideways a little but failed to knock me over or really hurt for that matter. "Crystal watch..." Fruity tried to yell in warning but stopped as he was too late. The ghoul lay on the floor and looked to be in a daze. I would be an all if I crashed into eight hundred pounds of thinly padded steel. "...out." He finished lamely as he pulled the knife out of the neck of the ghoul he attacked.

"You must be built like a tank to not get knocked down after taking a tackle like that." Fruity remarked in astonishment. I inwardly cringed at how close he was to describing what I could be inside.

My ears perked up as I heard the ghoul shifting behind me as it struggled to pull itself back up onto its broken hooves.

I sighed. "Sit down." I groaned and kicked out with my left hind leg. I didn't try to restrain myself so I think my body put every ounce of mechanical strength into the kick as I heard a wet tearing sound followed by a spurting of liquid shortly after my hoof connected with the ghoul's chin. Fruity's mouth dropped, and if this was a cartoon, it would probably have hit the floor and rolled out the door with how he held his mouth open in shock surprise. His shock prompted me to look at the ghoul and I gasped at what I saw, at what I did. My kick not only broke the ghoul's neck, it tore its head clean off its shoulders and kicked it clear across the room. That explained the wet tearing and liquid spurting noises. Dear goddesses, just how much strength did my endoskeleton possess?

"What?" I cried as Fruity was still gawking.

He shook his head to recover from the shock of my kicking a ghoul's head off. "Dude, I knew you zebras were strong but, fuck me!"

"We fall in the same category as Earth Ponies so we have superior natural strength," I think...

"Remind me to never piss you off, I don't I could handle you giving me a slap," He said with a smirk as he passed me to move towards the ramp.

"Oh har har."

The pegasus slowly walked up the incline to the door at the top. I, on the other hoof, stopped at the foot of the ramp. The broken section of roof didn't look safe or sturdy and with my weight it would certainly give way.

"Um, Fruity, that doesn't look safe." I called up to him.

The pegasus jiggled the door knob and then moaned in annoyance. "Blast, locked," He let go of the door and slid down the steep broken floor to the ground before me without turning around so he was still facing the broken ramp. There was suddenly a loud crumbling crack and the ramp seemed to split in half one half fell level to the floor while the other remained flush with the wall as it slid down. "Oh, piece of candy." He said seeing a shiny object on the collapsed section of floor and stepped up back onto the broken floor. The crumbling sound continued and my warning system flashed again. I looked up to see the other half starting to fall over and it would crash down on Fruity.

"Fruity look out!" I cried and acting on instinct, I grabbed him by his tail and yanked him back.

"Yeow!" The stallion cried as I tugged on his tail.

BANG! The broken segment slammed down where Fruity was standing moments before, kicking up a huge dust cloud that had us both choking.

"You *cough* saved my *hack* life," He coughed out.

"Hmm, you've *cough* saved me before, it's *cough* bout time I saved you *hack* for once."

He gave a grateful smile as we left the ruined the staffroom and continued on our way trying to find a way out. We turned a corner and stopped as we saw a fluorescent green light at the end of the hallway. I got a bad feeling from that light when it appeared to be moving and then my pipbuck's Geiger counter started to tick.

"Um, Fruity, my pipbuck's started to tick, is that bad?" I asked unsure.

"If it’s ticking, then there must be magical radiation in here,"

"But this is a space agency, what could they use that would be radioactive?"

"No idea, but there are ghouls in here so that could mean..." He trailed off as he looked down the hall fearfully.

"Mean what?" I asked shakily. As if to answer my question, a Feral Ghoul stalked out from around the corner and was apparently the source of the light as the ghoul was glowing as if it was a nightlight.

"Fruity, what the hell is that?"

"A Glowing One," He replied.

I turned and looked at him with a disbelieving raised eyebrow. "Seriously?"

"Hey, it's not like I named it, that's what everypony calls those glowing ones." He defended.

The ghoul reminded me of a villain from the old Batmare Beyond cartoons as it looked so much like a radioactive villain from the show who was called "Blight" and not to mention its skeleton was clearly visible, silhouetted by its glowing form, giving the creature a more terrifying appearance.

"What do we do?"

"Why don't you punch it?" Fruity suggested. "That kick worked well on the other ghoul."

It would save using up what little bullets I have left and well, being mostly machine has its benefits. I took a deep breath as I started to approach the glowing ghoul that, for the moment, was busy admiring the cracked plaster wall in front of it.

"Hey, wait, Crystal! I wasn't being serious." Fruity gasped out.

I didn't think he was but it was either run out of ammo and likely get mauled to death or make good use of my mechanised body. At least I could put my body to good use this way and defend my best friend, yeah, best friend. Fruity had been the only pony I've been able to grow close too who wasn't part of my family.

The ghoul turned its head to look at me after it finally noticed me. It opened its glowing mouth and let out hungry roar as it charged at me, faster than I was expecting. My threat warning flashed and I ducked to avoid a swipe from a foreleg it raised to hit me with at the last second. The creature skidded passed me as it missed but turned around quickly to come back in for another attempt. I reared up onto my hind legs and focused on the ghoul's head. As my gaze focused on the ghoul a reticule appeared around its head as if I was locking onto it. The creature came in close for a tackle and when the reticule flashed red, I brought my full weight down on the monster. I was surprised at the timing as my hooves drove into the creature's skull and with my weight I pushed it down to the floor. The glowing monster was still alive however, helplessly squirming under my hefty weight. I placed a forehoof onto the creature's back to keep it down while I raised the other, putting as much strength as I could into the leg, I could feel the control rods and servos tensing up as it built up tension before I then brought my hoof down on the creature's head. The impact pulverised its head, leaving a messy mush beneath my hoof.

"EWWW!" I cried in disgust.

"I ain't cleaning your hoof with my feathers this time." Fruity said while cringing at the glowing bits of brain stuck to my hoof.

"Eww," I whined as I began to drag my hoof across the old carpet like you would if you stood in dog crap. "I hate this place." I muttered loudly.

Fruity nodded his agreement as we continued down the corridor to get away from the radiation emitting from the dead ghoul. The corridor ended with a door to which we opened to check inside as it was our only way forward. What we saw inside stunned us. Not because it was a massive mess, not because we saw more ghouls, not because there was no floor, but because the room was completely out of place and totally unexpected. We stood in the doorway to the large room gazing out around the area, taking in all we could see. There were tables and workbenches piled high with pieces or energy based weapons, computer terminals on some of the tables with filing cabinets dotted about the place, and covering the walls were old deteriorated diagrams.

"What the hell is this?" Fruity asked in bafflement as he gestured to the whole room with a wing.

I slowly scanned the room, taking in everything on the walls and lying around on the tables and workbenches. As my eyes focused on several of the items, reticules appeared telling me what I was looking at. I saw plasma triggers, magical conductors, firing mechanisms, charge capacitors, focus optic lenses, pretty much everything needed to build an energy weapon and the diagrams on the walls, with what remained of them I deduced to being weapon schismatic's.

"Looks like some sort of weapon's research and development,"

"Where are we again?" Fruity asked trying to understand the room.

"Um, the MASA Headquarters," I replied while looking at my pipbuck map again just to be sure.

"And that is?"

"Err, a space exploration and um... monitoring agency...," I paused trying to think if there was more to it than that but shrugged when nothing came to mind. "I think," I added sounding a little unsure.

"Then what's all this?" The stallion asked unable to understand the weapons R&D room. "It makes no sense, what does any of this have to do with space?"

"I don't know, but I have a feeling we are going to find out." I said as I began to look around at the various parts and schematics.

We began to look around the room. Fruity quickly got over the shock of the unexpected room and seemed to be in hog’s heaven as he picked up and pocketed most of the still good pieces of energy weapon components until he found what he could use to fix the Plasma Rifle on his back.

"Oh sweet, a trigger system compatible for the MP12 Plasma Rifle." He cried out happily and pocketed the piece. "I'll be fixing you later," He said to his slung rifle.

"I'm sure you could build your own gun out of all this stuff,"

"Hah, I wish, I'm not that technical," He laughed. I smiled as I looked over to him as he pulled the top off a metal crate and then screamed out in happy surprise, which made me jump. "HOLY FUCKING SHIT, I HIT THE MOTHER LOAD,"

"What?" I asked after recovering from his sudden shout.

"Micro Manna Cells, lots of them." He smiled as he began to pluck each and every MMC out the box. "Oh wow, fifteen cells, that's three hundred shots worth of power cells,"

"Now you can assist in shooting something,"

"Once I repair this thing, I'll be back on my game," He smiled as he looked back at his Plasma Rifle. His smile faded as he regarded his rifle. "Wait, this is a newer model, aww damn, this requires twice as much juice to fire than the ones I used before. This ammo stockpile I found is only good for half the shots I mentioned with this rifle," He sighed.

"Still a lot."

He shrugged before he resumed his scavenging. While Fruity was making a mess with his scavenging, I looked into the filing cabinets. I found a lot of old pulped up paper and documents that were either too deteriorated to read or were so technical I couldn't make sense of them. After checking a few drawers, I opened a drawer that held a single red plastic folder. Curious, I pulled it out and opened it. Inside it held a sheet of paper that looked like to be some sort of signed agreement or official document as the seal for Princess Luna was still visible in the top left corner. Sadly, the elements had deteriorated the document enough that it was illegible in some areas. The first couple of paragraphs were readable and talked about the success of the Plasma powered rocket engine. The last paragraph that was still readable talked about the manufacture of plasma based weapons as a side project to better benefit the Equestrian soldiers.

"I think I know why there is a weapons lab here," I said while re-reading what was still legible on the document.

"Oh?"

"Err, from this, it looks like the government was impressed with that plasma rocket engine we saw downstairs and wanted them to build weapons based on it."

"Oh, well, I wouldn't be surprised if that's the case, the Enclave liked to get their hooves into everypony's business." He replied bitterly. Yeah, the pre-war government bought into a lot of things that would produce new weapons. It seemed Luna wanted nothing more than the complete annihilation of the enemy.

The second door in the room opened up into another hall way that had a T-junction, the connecting corridor branched off somewhere to the left and the path up ahead also turned a corner going left as well.

"How is it looking out there?" Fruity asked as he joined me.

"Clear." I replied and we cautiously began up the corridor.

As we drew closer to the T-junction a small green and white sign on the wall made me smile, the sign was a fire exit sign. I quickened my pace, eager to get to the fire exit door and get out of this hell hole. My face instantly dropped as we looked down the corridor, it was filled to the ceiling with rubble, just like the stairs to the lobby. I grit my teeth in anger at having our hope of a possible escape being shot down yet again and screamed with the combined stress.

"I HATE THIS FUCKING PLACE!"

"She can swear!" Fruity exclaimed and then started to laugh. "Haha, ohhh, I've been waiting all week for you to finally curse at something,"

I blushed with embarrassment from losing my temper. "I'm sorry, I wasn't brought up to be foul mouthed." That just made him laugh harder, which increased my feeling of embarrassment.

"Haha, oh come now Crys, this is the wasteland, every fucker swears fifty times before breakfast," Fruity laughed. We continued down the corridor and to the left hoof turn. "You should curse more often, it'll help relieve stress and all that."

"Really?" I asked sceptically.

"Eeyup, helps when you vent your emotions and stuff,"

"How does that work?" I asked as we came to the corner and we continued up the corridor.

Fruity turned and gave me a slightly annoyed expression. "What do I look like, a psychiatrist?"

"Sorry," I apologised with my ears wilting.

"Hey don't worry about." He said with a soft smile and petted my withers with his wing as we came to a flight of intact stairs going up.

Fruity walked up the stairs first with me taking up the rear, going slowly. The stairs may have been intact but they were old and deteriorated to a point and my heavy weight was causing them to groan loudly. Couldn't they have built my body out of something lighter?

We stepped out into a wide landing with two open doors ahead of us and next to the door for the stairs we just came up we saw a rusty metal door for a lift. Holding onto a little hope, but highly doubting it, I walked up to the lift and pressed the call button. Predictably, nothing happened.

"Wow, somepony had an explosive shit." Fruity joked as he stood looking into the mare toilets. Stepping up to his side I saw what he had seen. All the cubicle dividers were blown down against one another and away from the centre toilet and the back wall had been blown down into a room that looked like it contained the building's mainframe. The funny thing about this scene however was that the toilet itself was completely intact and it succeeded in bringing out a chuckle.

After a brief look around and the emptying of two medical kits, we found still attached to the walls we deduced we had no other option but to go through the hole in the toilet wall and into the mainframe room. The room held a huge cube like computer system that did seem to still be working and little else save for a safe tucked away in the far corner. Unfortunately, neither of us had a bobby pin so we couldn't pick the lock and quite frankly, I didn't want to waste anymore time in here by messing around with a safe. Not to mention I don't know the first thing about picking a lock.

We pushed open a pair of double doors that opened up into a very spacious office that looked like the floor was about to go, as the carpet was in tatters and the floorboards were broken in several places and the centre of the room had sunk down slightly. Fruity flapped his wings and hovered over the damaged floor while I cautiously walked around the more sturdy outer edge, keeping close to the wall while also avoiding the filing cabinet that would have threatened to make me step onto the damaged area.

"This place is just getting worse." I moaned as we came to another set of double doors and pushed them open.

On the other side, a surprise awaited us. Hovering a few feet from the door to the office we just left was a ball like robot with three spider like limbs, three ball like optical units on extendable arms and a thruster mounted to the bottom of it keeping it in the air. I vaguely remember seeing this model of robot in the Stable-Tec inventory as a Mr Hoofty personal assistant. To see one here and still functioning was indeed a surprise.

The machine seemed to have noticed us as it turned around and regarded us. Thankfully, its tag in my EFS was showing up as white, meaning it was a non-hostile.

"Third floor is for executives only, please identify." It buzzed.

Oh no.

"Shit." Fruity said out loud.

"Pass phrase incorrect,"

"Damn it,"

"Pass phrase incorrect,"

"Fruity shut up," I cried but then immediately shoved my hoof into my mouth and groaned at my own stupidity.

"Pass phrase incorrect.... Intruder alert, intruder alert..." The machine began to blare out loudly.

We had found ourselves in a wide hallway, to our right was the end as it was just a wall, to our left the hall branched off to the right. As the Mr Hoofty began sounding the alarm, a section of the wall beside us sunk back with a loud clunk.

"Oh not these guys again." Fruity and I whined in unison and as the wall began to slide away to reveal the Sentry Drone on the other side, we tore down the hall and ran around the corner before the drone could have left its birth.

"Fruity, it just occurred to me why we ran into Sentry Drones downstairs," I said as we entered another small landing with a door and a lift.

"Oh yeah?"

"That weapons lab downstairs," I panted.

"Huh, you're right, it makes sense now."

CLUNK!

We whirled around to the right of the lift and door as a section of wall sunk back.

CLUNK!

We whirled around to the wall on the left as it sunk back as well.

"Oh for fuck sake." Fruity whined and before we could say hello to tons of robot and bullets, we crashed through the door and fell rather unceremoniously down a flight of stairs.

"Uhhh, are you ok?" I groaned, laying on my belly with my legs splayed out and aching all over from the tumble.

"Surprisingly yeah, I had something rather soft to land on." Fruity said as he picked himself up into a sitting position and it was then I realised he was sat on my rump.

"You can get off me now," I moaned as the pain started to subside.

"Nah, you are rather comfy." Fruity laughed.

I rolled my eyes and stood up which made him loose his balance and fall off my rear and onto his back.

"A little warning next time." He whined.

I replied by sticking my tongue out playfully. However, my playful expression soured to that of disgust as the rotten smell from before returned with a vengeance.

We found ourselves now in a long corridor, the end of which however I could see was filled with rubble. Another T-junction was up ahead about half way up the hall and past it I could see two doors. With little choice as to where to go from here we began to walk up the corridor. As we drew closer to the junction we began to hear the sounds of hissing and laboured breathing. My threat warning was glowing a constant red right now and my EFS had a few targets clustered together on the right which put them in the hall down from the junction. We stopped as we came to the junction and cautiously, we peeked around the corner. I had to cover my mouth to stop myself from letting out a gasp. The hall had six Feral Ghouls standing in it and in the distance behind them I could see more milling about, it was like we just stumbled into a horde of zombies.

"If it's not one problem, it’s several," Fruity quietly moaned.

"No point moaning about it, let's get to those doors, quietly." I stressed. Fruity nodded and we crouched low and began to slowly creep our way passed the junction and up the corridor.

The floor boards creaked and groaned under our hoof steps, mine more than his, but thankfully the ghouls didn't notice the creaking over their own movements. As we drew closer to the doors one of them turned out to be a door to an office while the other was a blue security door with a card reader like the door next to the lobby.

*CRACK!*

My hoof went through a rotted floor board. "Oh no," I whined.

A ghoul let out a raspy moan from down the corridor. We looked back fearfully, my heart was pounding in my throat as a shadow began to move into the corridor.

"Fruity, cardkey," I whimpered as I pulled my hoof out of the floor.

"Huh?"

I nodded to the blue door. "Oh..."

A ghoul stepped into the corridor and looked around before its dead gaze settled on us and it opened its broken mouth and let out its disturbing roar.

"Quickly please." I urged as I backed up towards him as he plucked the card from his pocket and went to swipe it in the card reader.

The ghoul's roar had alerted its brethren and before long, we had ten to twelve ghouls slowly approaching us. Oh Celestia this is more terrifying than the robots. Then there was a sound that sounded like heaven had just granted us access as the door lock released as it accepted the security card.

"Quickly, inside." Fruity urged as he threw the door open. I didn't need to be told twice and quickly bolted through the door as the ghouls roared in hunger and charged.

We found ourselves in an office with no way out, but for the moment, we had worse things to worry about and once we were both inside we slammed the door shut. However fate decided it would be funny with us and now the door was stuck in a permanent open state. The cardkey had opened the door but now there was no lock to keep the door closed. Thinking quickly, I ran over to a filing cabinet that was devoid of its drawers.

"Crystal what are yo..." He began to complain as he held the door closed but he clocked onto what I was doing as I began to drag the cabinet over to the door to barricade it. Fruity quickly jumped away from the door as I gave the cabinet a shove to knock it over. The Ghouls reached the door just as Fruity jumped away from it, and then the door got slammed back into their faces as the hefty cabinet crashed against the door and held it closed. We breathed a sigh of relief as the ghouls banged on the door but failed to budge the cabinet.

"Ain't this ironic, we came in this building to get away from the geckos, and now we’re trapped in here to get away from the ghouls." Fruity sighed as he began to pace.

I didn't say anything; there was nothing to say that would better our situation or to lighten the mood. I hung my head as I trotted for a corner desk to sit down on the chair still beside it. I got to about the centre of the room when all of a sudden the floor sagged with a deep rumble and a crack. I looked up at Fruity with fearful eyes at what was about to happen and suddenly I was free falling, for about a second, and crashed into the hard floor below me with plaster and bits of wood raining down all over me as the crumbling floor above collapsed.

"Holy shit, Crys!" Fruity yelled and jumped down the hole after me. Being a pegasus, jumping off things didn't bother him at all. He landed on the floor beside me and started to push pieces of wood and broken plaster off me. "Shit, are you alright?"

"I'm fine, I landed on my butt." I moaned as I flopped onto my back and groaned. I was in fact hurting all over. That hard impact with the floor had rattled my entire body, and my vision had alerted me to a half dozen minor faults regarding my rear legs, but thankfully, the repair system had kicked in almost instantly to ensure my legs remained functioning but I still felt like I had just smashed a metal bar with a cricket bat. You know the feeling when you accidently hit something solid at full force and it sends a wave of pain rushing through your mouth or forelegs, depending on how you used the bat.

"Where are we?" I asked sitting up.

"Umm, I dunno, looks like some sort of store room." He replied as he began to look around.

I moaned in discomfort as I pulled myself to my hooves. I found myself facing a corner with a terminal mounted to the wall, damaged by the fallen ceiling and a heavy duty security door. The kind of security door with locking clamps. Great, still trapped.

"Oh sweet!" Fruity cried out in excitement.

"Huh, what is it?" I asked, my ears perking up.

Fruity happily fluttered out from behind the collapsed ceiling carrying a Plasma Rifle in his forehooves. The one he now held was brown in colour and seemed to have an extra three knobs on the top.

"It's a prototype Mark II Plasma Rifle. This one is called the "Q-Matter Modulator" or so the plaque on its containment tube said,"

"Now you can join in with the battles," I joked half heartedly.

Fruity nodded. "We need to get out of here first."

I nodded in agreement and checked the damaged terminal and unfortunately it refused to turn on. I bet this terminal controlled the door as well.

"Terminal is busted," I sighed.

"Hmm, these clamps are all connected by a central shaft," Fruity said to himself as he examined the door and where the locking clamps control rods joined in the centre behind a metal wheel. "A plasma bolt dead centre should melt the connection and release the clamps."

We didn't have another option really so I kept quiet and let Fruity do his work. He reared up onto his hind legs and began to flap his wings to keep himself balanced while he stood upright and used his forelegs to hold the rifle. One of his hooves held under the barrel before the super conducting emerald discharge barrel and the other held the curved hoof trigger.

With the way he was holding the weapon, it was telling me it wasn't a Mark II like he believed.

"Unable to identify weapon." Flashed across my vision as I took in the weapon more inattentively.

Fruity pulled the trigger, and with a pop and a whoosh, the weapon released its super heated green bolt of magical energy. I could feel the heat from the ball of energy as it whizzed past me and struck the door dead centre. The impact area began to glow a bright green and the sound of metal being stressed began to groan out from the door. The wait was agonising as we listened to the metal stressing under the superheated affects of the plasma strike, but we were rewarded for our patience when two metal pops rung out and the door's locking clamps released and gravity took over and the door dropped into the floor like a lead weight.

"Good shot." I praised.

The purple stallion smiled as he sat down and quickly made another strap so he could carry the Q-Matter Modulator. "Q-Matter Modulator, that's a mouthful..." Fruity muttered to himself as he fastened a new strap to the weapon. "Q-Modulator, that sounds better."

The door opened up to a rather short corridor which looked to open up into a small office space at the end. The hall also contained another T-junction going off to the left but from here we could see bits of rubble sticking out so that told us it was likely blocked off. A sign hung from the cracked ceiling and our hope at finding our way out was restored. The sign had an arrow pointing straight ahead saying "Security/Lobby" and beneath it, it had an arrow pointing to the rubble filled hall saying "Offices". Wait, offices? Then that meant, that was the staircase we found earlier that was filled in and forced us to go through that zombie hell.

"Yes we can leave at last," Fruity sang as we started for the security office.

"Some fresh air will be greatly appreciated," My nose could certainly use it after smelling all that decay.

"Oh yea." Fruity agreed.

We had just made it to the office when a hulking Sentry Drone wheeled out in front of us.

"Oh shit!" Fruity and I cried in unison from the surprise appearance.

"Unregistered facial pattern detected, valid security badge detected, temporary access granted," It droned out automatically when it seemed to detect the security key Fruity held in his pocket. The machine was about to turn when it noticed the Q-Modulator. "Unauthorised removal of classified equipment, theft will not be tolerated!"

"Oh come on you have got to be yanking my chain I haven't took owt like that," Fruity whined as the large machine turned so it's twin miniguns were aimed at him. He responded to the miniguns by pulling the prototype rifle off his back and holding it again ready to shoot and he pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. "Shit, I should have checked what charge was left in that Mana Cell." He whined as he began to struggle with the MMC's cradle to which, at this point, the sentry's miniguns were spinning up.

I felt utter dread that my best friend was about to be turned into swiss cheese and that was something I did not want to happen. I couldn't let that happen, I just couldn't. I felt something snap inside me and my vision drained itself of colour until all I could see was everything in a shade of red, multiple lines of code began to run around the edges of my vision as a reticule focused on the sentry drone's head and then I charged at it. The drone turned, sensing my advance, and since I was closest I was the more important threat. I ducked as it began to fire, getting under and then, between its streams of bullets, I reached the machine to which I then jumped up. I planted my rear hooves onto its chassis and held onto its shoulder with my left forehoof while I drew my right hoof back. I could feel the tension in my leg, the servos and control rods struggling to apply more and more tension before I finally threw my hoof forward. I hit the machine square in the face with my unrestrained punch, the mechanical pony head exploded into a shower of sparks and my hoof continued until I had drove it about a foot into the machine's body and it puttered out and died with its control system destroyed. My unstrained attack however turned out to be a double edge sword because not only did I kill the machine but the impact had broken the connection between my hoof and fetlock and the broken metal of the machine acted like multiple knives now cutting into the flesh of my foreleg.

"HO...LY... SHIT!" Fruity gaped as he stood there gawking. "I knew you were strong but, dude."

"Ow, I couldn't let it, ow, hurt you," I whimpered as I carefully extracted my damaged leg from the machine's husk. My leg, apart from the broken hoof, had been cut to ribbons and one cut was so deep I could see the metal skeletal limp underneath. I cringed with new found pain as I held the damage.

"Thank you," Fruity said with gratitude and then unexpectedly nuzzled my cheek which set off a fiery blush across my cheeks. "Here, let me help with that." He offered as he shoved his head completely into one of his duster's pockets. I almost began to worry he would suffocate in there until he then pulled his head free with a roll of bandages and a healing potion. I smiled softly as I accepted the potion and held my leg out for him to bandage. I cringed and moaned in pain as he held my hoof and put it back into position as he wrapped it in bandages. The healing potion would fix the shredded flesh, and the bandages would help keep my hoof in place for my repair system to fix whenever it kicked in, I might need to eat something metal before that though.

"That was the bravest and kindest thing anypony has ever done for me," Fruity said softly when he finished bandaging my leg. "Or the stupidest," He muttered quietly, but in a playful tone.

I giggled. "Oh don't ruin the moment," I then surprised myself by returning his nuzzle. I've never felt like doing that to anyone but my parents before. Do I really like him that much? With a slightly goofy smile I turned and started to limp towards the blue door to the lobby. "C'mon, let's finally get out of here,"

"Yes ma'am." He chirped fluttering in the air like he was shot with cupid's arrow.

Fruity swiped the cardkey into the card reader and opened the security door to the lobby. The main doors were open. One of the double doors had been shattered, and the other had swung back against the reception desk and almost looked like it was about to break in half. Something had managed to break open the doors even with the deadbolts in place.

"That can't be good." Fruity sighed.

Cautiously, we entered the MASA Headquarters lobby again. Whatever broke those doors open might’ve still been here. As we moved around the model rocket in the middle of the lobby we saw something that filled us with dread. The security shutter that had first locked us into the museum had been pushed up slightly in one corner, giving enough clearance for something around our size to squeeze through. What could lift a security shutter like those?

"We should leave, like, right now!" I urged, not wanting to be around to find out what could life a steel door like that.

"Yeah I'm with you there, let's scarper."

We turned and fled as fast as we could, wanting to get as much distance from that hellhole and whatever had broken in.


XXXXX


*Several hours earlier*

"Attention... Attention... I-01 detected within the Marejave region. Repeat. I-01 detected within the Marejave region." An electronic female voice droned out throughout the empty control room.

A large computer monitor dominating a wall turned on automatically, showing a map of the Marejave desert and a yellow blip marked with "I-01" moving at high speed up a rail line heading towards Tom City. The map screen then shrunk down to a fifth of its original size and moved down into the bottom left corner and a green wireframe face of a stallion filled the screen. The face turned and angled down as if to look at the map screen.

"After two centuries I finally have my opportunity to finish what I started." The stallion said in a deep commanding tone before the head looked up and out into the room. Its gaze settled on a door in the far wall off to the back corner. The wireframe pony's eyes flashed and the door slid open to reveal a pitch black room.

Two red lights appeared in the darkness and began to sway slightly as it drew closer to the open door. Soon a black metal robotic pony that looks skeletal in appearance and with a tail made of many black fibres, left the dark room and stood before the computer.

"It is time I gave you a purpose I-02 IS," The wireframe stallion said as it looked over the robotic skeleton. "And it is important that you succeed."

"What is my mission?" The robotic skeleton buzzed in an emotionless electronic voice.

"You are to retrieve I-01 and bring it back here intact," The computer commanded. "It is imperative that you bring it back intact for it holds the key to make my plan a reality."

The machine nodded. "Affirmative."

The yellow blip on the map lost a lot of speed as it reached Tom City before again slowly making its way up the rail line.

"I-02 IS, use any means necessary to bring it back but again, do not destroy it, failure will not be tolerated and I would hate to lose you. You are the only I-02 not sealed within the vault," The stallion ordered. "All thanks to that traitorous wench..." The computer muttered to itself quietly. The robot didn't react to the unusual behaviour of its commander.

The door in the centre of the opposite wall facing the computer opened to let the robot out. As the black metal robot skeleton turned an alarm rung out from the computer.

"Warning, I-01 signal lost, repeat, I-01 signal lost... Disruption Magic detected before signal loss. Last known location, MASA Headquarters."

"No, I can't lose it now. What are you waiting for, go and bring it back." The wireframe stallion shouted in anger.

The robot turned and broke into a fast trot as it navigated the corridors of the facility until it came to the exit and left. The machine walked through a dark and dank cave until it emerged into the blistering early morning sun light bathing the Marejave desert. The machine found itself on the top of a rocky hill with a good view of everything around it.

To the northwest it could see the old Las Pegasus Industrial District, north were the ruins of Las Pegasus itself along with the smaller walled off section of the city that has been named New Pegasus, northeast were rocky hills and mountains beyond Lake Meadow, east lay the great Horseshoe Dam, southeast lay the Coltorado River, south were more hills and behind some hills lay Tom City, southwest lay open land and salt lake flats with a few settlements dotted about and to the west lay Nightmare Mountain and at its base, the MASA Headquarters.

"Target location identified. Open ground between here and there, chance of being seen, high..." I-02 IS said to itself as it regarded the distance to its target.

As the machine contemplated what it should do to remain hidden, it saw a pony completely glad in armour. The armour looked like old riot police armour with a large trench coat covering it and a full head helmet with an air filter to one side of the muzzle and two red lenses to protect the eyes.

"Acceptable."

The robot began to move down the hill towards the pony that appeared to be busy peering down into a valley. As I-02 IS drew closer it became aware that the pony was armed with an Anti-Machine Rifle fitted to a battlesaddle. Coming up behind the armour clad pony the robot began to move slowly and quietly as to not alert it.

The Desert Ranger got a feeling like something was watching him and then he could hear the dirt shifting under a heavy weight coming up from behind him. Thinking a raider was trying to get the jump on him he waited until he assumed the assailant would be in striking range and quickly spun around to surprise it. The Ranger found himself almost muzzle to muzzle with a black robotic skeleton.

"Holy fucking shit, what the fuck is that?" The Ranger cried out in a medium toned but smooth voice.

Suddenly the machine lashed out. Before he could mount any sort of defence, the robot had firmly grabbed him around the neck with its black nano-fibre tail and constricted around his neck, not enough to choke him nor damage the armour but enough to make it very uncomfortable.

"Voice calibration in progress," It buzzed as it hauled the Ranger off his forehooves with its tail. "Talk, equine." It demanded.

"Talk, what the fuck?" He choked as he struggled to free himself. "Let me go,"

"Keep talking," I-02 demanded as it used its tail to slam the struggling Ranger into the dirt floor.

"Son of a bitch, you bastard, let me go right now," He yelled as he bashed the fibres with his forehooves.

"Keep talking," The machine repeated.

"Piece of shit, let me go, you're killing me." The Ranger pleaded and then trigged his battlesaddle, hoping to hit the machine but his body was facing off to one side so his fifty calibre shot went wide. Suddenly he was released from the fibre tail's grip.

"Calibration complete," He heard the machine say and as he picked himself up to be able to strike the machine he felt two impacts to the sides of his head and found that the machine had grabbed his head with its hooves. "You're usefulness has ended." The machine said in an exact copy of his own voice. The machine had just copied his voice. The machine then violently twisted the stallion's head, breaking his neck and killing him.

The robot carefully peeled the dead pony from his armour and then slipped into it itself. The suit of armour fit perfectly and nopony would think its fibre tail to be any different at a glance as it threaded it through the hole in the rear. Once in the old riot armour, the machine then strapped the battlesaddle into place and found that the firing mechanism connects to the helmet. After making sure the battlesaddle was securely in place the machine then picked up the helmet, its deep set optical units scanned over the full head encompassing helmet before it slowly slipped the helmet over its head and into place, and with a click, the helmet was fastened into place and the connection to the battlesaddle made. To finish the ensemble the red lenses of the helmet began to glow.

The disguised I-02 IS grabbed the dead pony with its tail and dragged him out of sight before it casually began to walk in the direction of the MASA Headquarters.

Chapter 5: A Painful Truth

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Fallout Equestria
Influx

Chapter 5: A Painful Truth

Crash!

Bang!

Crunch!

Thuds and booms rocked the decaying corridors of the old run down MASA Headquarters as a lone figure walked its halls. The feral creatures known as ghouls would attack this figure with the desire to feed on its flesh, but before they could, it would swat them aside like flies with a flick of a boot covered hoof. The ghouls didn't know and couldn't process they were attacking a machine instead of a flesh and blood pony, for it wore the armour of a Desert Ranger so to them it was a pony like any other.

"Rawr!" A ghoul roared as it thundered down the roof access stairs at the approaching Ranger. The Ranger didn't flinch or slow down on its approach even as the ghoul pounced from the bottom step. With a swift stomp, the Ranger brought its hoof down on top of the attacking ghoul's head as it got in range and drove it into the floor with enough force to turn its head into mush, putting it out of its misery forever. Undeterred, the Ranger walked up the stairs until it came to a locked door at the top that blocked its path to the roof. The hidden robot swiftly spun around and delivered an applebuck to the door, the door flew off its hinges from the impact and fell over the side of the building with a mighty crash upon hitting ground. Silently, the machine stepped out onto the roof of the MASA HQ and walked up to the chest high wall surrounding the roof's perimeter and began to survey its surroundings in search of its target.

Through its red tinted vision plus the red lenses of the helmet, the machine slowly scanned the area around the building. Taking in all it could see until its gaze would face north in the direction of the Las Pegasus ruins as at least a mile away, the machine caught two ponies running. I-02 IS stepped up to the wall and activated his AM Rifle's scope system built into the helmet and zoomed in as far as it could go on the running pair.

"Target one.... Pegasus... Male... Armed... Unknown plasma weapon,"

The machine swept its gaze to the other figure running beside the pegasus stallion.

"Target two... Primary target identified, I-01."

The machine disengaged the scope and watched as the pegasus and the zebra disguised machine ran closer and closer to the ruins of the once great city.

"Incoming transmission from Production Facility."

The machine sat down as it watched the two ponies disappear into the ruins.

"Have you acquired your target? You have been at the facility for a good hour." Came the demanding voice of the computer over the transmission.

"Negative sir, the building's security had been tripped and I had to go through the security shutters and the sentry drones which slowed me down. However, upon emerging on the roof I saw two targets fleeing the area and one of them was I-01," I-02 IS replied as if he was replying to a superior officer.

"I-01's signal transmitter is still offline, I am unable to track its movements, where is it headed now?"

"I-01 has entered the ruins of Las Pegasus sir."

The machine stood up as it prepared to move out.

"With its signal transmitter offline, you will be limited in your ability to track it. You will know when you are close to I-01 as your scanners should be able to pick up its power cell's energy signature. Word of warning however, I-01 was designed with weak power cells to enforce the need to recharge so if the power signature is weak enough you may lose track of it until it recharges,"

"Affirmative."

It was then that the computer realised that I-02 wasn't talking to him in the electronic, emotionless voice it did before it left, which sparked some curiosity.

"What became of your voice?"

"There was a lot of open ground between here and the Production Facility. I needed to find cover and I happened upon a pony dressed in a full body suit of armour. I copied his voice so that while wearing the armour I could blend in and with I-01 now within the ruins of Las Pegasus, I am safe to say it was necessary,"

"Very good, I want regular updates on your progress, and remember, I-01 is to be brought back intact." The computer ordered and with that it ended the transmission.

The machine turned back to open door and found three of the undead monsters that it had been dealing with through the second floor standing there with their mouths open and grunting with hunger. I-02 IS lowered itself down into a combat stance and the three ghouls charged.

XXXXX

We galloped as fast as our legs could carry us away from the robot and ghoul infested building and toward my home city of Las Pegasus, or what was left of it. Our desire to run was being fuelled by the need to get as far away from whatever was able to break through those security shutters. Neither one of us would likely want to run into something strong enough to do that.

Again, I felt disturbed by how I wasn't feeling out of breath or tired as we ran. My heart was thundering in my chest, but my breath was coming as normally as if I was on a leisurely stroll. I would catch Fruity looking at me every now and then as we ran, I could tell he has noticed my lack of fatigue when he's puffing and panting. I doubt I would be able to keep up this charade much longer.

The city was drawing near and the ruins of its suburbs were fast approaching. Everything that I once knew had been rendered to nothing by rubble. As far as the eye could see, all I saw was destruction. My heart fell and my stomach felt like it was lead as the feeling of despair set in. No, I can't lose it here not now, I've done enough of that so far, I need to focus. I closed my eyes and took deep calming breaths to bring myself back under control but that was until I got a shiver down my spine.

I ground to a halt as we came to an intersection in the cracked road and hid myself behind the wall of what had once been a corner shop. All that remained of the shop was the actual corner wall I took cover behind.

"What's the... phew wee... matter?" Fruity asked as he panted for breath while also getting behind the wall.

"I think we are being watched," I replied quietly and peeked out from around the corner and looked down in the direction we had come, all the way back to the building all the way into the distance. "From the MASA Headquarters,"

"Then I think we should keep moving, you know, to put more distance between us and whatever the fuck is in there." Fruity said.

I nodded and we continued to move.

We walked pretty much in silence as we moved through the rubble strewn roads and streets as we made our way towards the intact city centre. Well, it looked intact from what we could see. We were pretty much lost as we cautiously moved through the streets of destroyed and ruined homes while we moved deeper into the ruins. I may have lived in Las Pegasus for twenty six years before all this but I didn't venture far from the central and eastern areas of the city so I had no knowledge of the road systems in southern Las Pegasus.

It hurt to see the city in the state it was in now considering what it was like back before the war. Before the war, Las Pegasus was Equestria's entertainment capital, boasting enough lights that the dead of night was as bright as day and able to make and break ponies with the many casinos in the famous Strip. It was a wondrous place to spend a vacation if you had the bits to spare and the many sights to see would leave you amazed. Now the city was a ruin and nothing like its former self, we may have been in the suburbs right now but it was clear that the life the city once held was long gone.

"Aww dude, the clear sky and bright sun paint a whole new light on the whole wasteland thing," Fruity muttered as he looked around at all the deserted houses as we walked along the ruined, cracked and over grown road.

"What do you mean?" I asked turning to look at my purple friend.

"Back around Manehattan with all the cloud cover, it was always dark so it hid a lot of..." He paused as he gestured with a hoof to a pile of bones on the cracked pavement. "This."

I could understand where Fruity was coming from with that. The bright Marejave sun was like a giant spot light in the sky compared to the bleak dark shade of the cloud cover from over central and eastern Equestria.

Fruity extended his wings and began to fan himself.

"Dear sweet Luna it’s hot," He complained. "How are you not sweating your ass off?"

I had lived in this heat all my life so I was used to it. "I'm used to it," I said absentmindedly. My eyes widened slightly as I realised what I said and Fruity raised an eyebrow as he looked towards me. I really wouldn't be able to keep this charade going if I kept slipping up like this. "The stable was always a bit stuffy." I quickly added. Celestia I hate lying to him like this.

"Well you're lucky, I'm sweating up a storm here." He whined while fanning himself with his wings.

We came to another intersection and directly ahead, I could see the road passed over a large carriageway. The carriageway was one of those multilane roads to deal with lots of traffic and usually encircled the city they were built around or connected to.

"Oh my gosh," I gasped as we stepped upon the bridge and looked down onto the carriageway. The eight lanes were practically clogged up with pony drawn or self propelled carriages and all of them were all going in one direction and that was away from the city. What was worse were the many skeletons all strewn about as they had abandoned their vehicles and died from whatever it was they were all running from.

"I'm sorry Crystal, but you'll see many more horrible sights like this in the wasteland." Fruity sighed as he wrapped his wing around me for comfort.

I sighed and steeled my nerves as I looked back up and followed the road north with my eyes. It would take us all the way through the suburbs and industrial areas of the city and past the city centre, pretty much giving us an easy access route.

"Let's follow this carriageway, it'll take us where we need to go." I said and begun to walk along the raised embankment of the carriageway. I wasn't going to walk down on the road itself with all those skeletons there, I was more than enough disturbed as it was.

As we walked onwards, the buildings beside the carriageway were more damaged than I would have thought being this deep in the city. We were walking through what had once been a number of office blocks beside the carriageway and not one of them had any intact floors or windows; they were pretty much shells with piles of rubble in the middle of them. Just what the hell happened to my home?

"Um, how are you doing Crystal?" Fruity asked as we weaved around a corner of a crumbling office building.

"I'll be ok, how about you?" I asked, thankful for the break in the silence we had fallen under.

"Heh, I'm perfectly fine," He said puffing out his chest. I knew that was a lie because he was still sweating under the sun but it just made me giggle. Fruity smiled. "You know, um, you do look rather attractive in that get up," He said softly with a hint of a blush colouring his cheeks.

I blinked in surprise and blushed myself. "You really think so?" I asked bashfully.

Fruity smiled and nodded as he turned his head to fully look at me. "Hmm, yes you really...whoa!" Fruity was cut off as he fell into a huge hole since he wasn't looking where he was going.

"Oh my gosh Fruity!" I cried as I rushed up to the raised rim of the hole. As I crested the rim of the hole I took notice of the circular shape of the bowl like hole. A message flashed into my vision as I took in the details of the hole.

"Impact crater."

I gasped at the realisation that my friend had just fallen into a crater created by a bomb impact. I suppose the state of those offices was a result of their proximity to the blast.

"Are you alright?" I called down into the crater.

"Ugh, yeah, I'm good." Fruity groaned as he pulled himself up off the dirt, flapping his wings to fly out of the hole and land on the pavement beside me.

When he landed I walked up to him and gently nuzzled his cheek. "I'm glad you are ok and, um, thank you for the compliment Fruity." I cooed softly. There was an audible pomf as his wings shot open and became ridged.

"Hehe, you're welcome." Fruity said with a goofy smile.

We continued onwards in slightly better spirits after our little display of affection, and as the sun began to move on its downward ark in the sky for the afternoon we came to a giant wall of cobbled together junk that looked to surround the entirety of the city centre. I couldn't see a way through the wall and flying me over would be a bad idea, simply because Fruity wouldn't be able to lift me and something was telling me that with the height of the wall they wanted to keep everything out and would probably have something in place to deal with unauthorised pegasi trying to fly in.

As we stared at the wall, we also saw the iconic large welcome sign to the city still standing, but for me, it was a heart breaking scene to see the state of the once beautiful sign. The once bright and welcoming "Welcome to Fabulous Las Pegasus" was now rusty, full of holes, the entire bottom half of the sign was missing, half of the lights looked to be broken and the welcome sign now read as. "Welcome to Fabulous New Pegasus" with the word "New" made out of what looked like old lettering from other signs as the three letters were all mismatched in font styles.

"You know, I saw pictures in old history books about this place as a colt, this place used to be beautiful and full of wonders. I wish I could have seen it back then." Fruity said idly as he looked up at the rusty sign. Oh Fruity, I wish you could have too, it was beautiful back then.

I didn't know how long we stood staring at the old sign for but we were brought back to our senses by the sound of clip clopping hooves coming from behind us. We both turned around, Fruity shaking his Q-Modulator off his back so it hung under his right wing, until we were looking back down the road we had walked up to get here. Our ears were swivelling around as we tried to pin point where the clopping hooves were coming from. It wasn't long before we discovered the sound coming from behind a ruined motel next to the offices we passed earlier.

"Get ready Crystal, they could be raiders," Fruity warned.

"No, my EFS is showing two non-hostile tags slowly approaching." I said looking to my compass on my EFS.

We waited with baited breath, Fruity looked ready to swing his plasma rifle fully around if he needed to use it. My sensitive audio receptors in my ears began to pick up idle banter that didn't sound like it belonged to raiders or of any other type of pony we were aware of.

"You know mate, patrolling in the Marejave almost makes you wish for a Baleful Winter," One voice said that sounded like it belonged to a mare.

"No kidding, I've been here a year and I'm still not used to this heat." The other voice replied in a masculine tone.

It was only a few seconds later after that when we saw two Earth ponies dressed in Equestrian army desert camo battle armour and metal rimmed combat helmets walk out from behind the motel talking to each other. They turned in our direction and I was able to see that they were both armed with a battlesaddle mounted with a Colt-Army AR15 Service Rifle on each saddle. The weapon they had were a semi-automatic, 5.56mm ammunition firing anti-infantry and light armour weapon. The mare of the group was a cream colour with a white mane and tail and the stallion was a light blue with a dark green mane and tail. The mare looked towards us and her gaze settled on me and her eyes widened in surprise and then narrowed.

"ZEBRA!" She shouted and before we knew what was going on the two armoured ponies ran up to us and had their weapons pointed at me.

"Whoa, hey, where's the fire?" Fruity cried out.

"You got a lot of nerve coming this far into the city zebra," The stallion growled.

"You Illustrious Moon zebras are a real headache," The mare complained.

I blinked in confusion, they must have me mistaken for somepony else. "The what?" I asked.

The two soldier ponies looked at each other with raised brows before looking back to us.

"Take off your hat." The stallion demanded.

I nodded and reached up and pushed my hat back so it sat on the back of my head, giving the troopers a clear look at my face. Their eyes widened and their hostile attitude evaporated.

"Oh, we're sorry miss, we thought you were part of the Illustrious Moon Tribe," The stallion said apologetically.

"It's ok, no harm done," I said with a soft smile as the two ponies lowered their service rifles.

"Who are you and what is this tribe you are talking about?" Fruity asked as he stepped closer to me.

"We are part of the Rangers," Noticing our confused expressions the mare soldier elaborated more. "Uh, Desert Rangers, we’re a growing group of ponies dedicated in protecting ponies in and around New Pegasus while also trying to strive for a more pre-war like society with the principles of democracy," Well, that sounded good for this world right now. It would be good for at least some ponies to try and bring it back from the dead unlawful wasteland it is right now.

"As for the tribe," The stallion began with a hint of venom in his voice. "We don't have a problem with zebras ourselves in general, in fact we've incorporated several zebra tribes into the Desert Rangers and they have helped us a great deal but this tribe. However, we have never met a darker bunch in our time in the Rangers. They call themselves the Illustrious Moon Tribe and are local to the Marejave region but unlike most zebra tribes who fear the moon and stars due to a superstition about Nightmare Moon or as they call her, the Maiden of the Stars, this tribe worships the moon and practices in some rather dark arts,"

"That's right, normally we would have left this tribe alone if they didn't want anything to do with us, but they raided and attacked several of our caravans," The mare continued after her teammate. "Which caused us to take action against them. Normally we would try for a peaceful solution but none of our messengers would make it to their camp that was at Bonbon Springs without getting attacked so we had to send in our troops to drive them out," The mare sighed, looking quite sad at this point.

"There was a miscommunication when the tribe tried to evacuate their young and elderly out of a back passage that we had also covered and they got slaughtered. We let the tribe leave peacefully after that, but they said they would make us pay one day," The stallion continued. "While we began to dismantle their old camp we began to find items and manuscript segments detailing an ancient and outlawed magic,"

I was suddenly getting an icy chill running down my spine at this when both of them stopped talking looking very uncomfortable about what it was they had found.

"What was it?" Fruity asked looking as disturbed as I was.

"They were looking into Necromancy." The stallion finished.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Fruity cried out. "They were trying to raise the dead?"

"That is what we believe so far, there wasn't enough to actually perform anything like that but what was left behind was enough though to make us believe they were looking into it."

"Eh, no wonder you jumped at me like that," I said while pushing my Stetson back up.

"We are sorry for that, but we are glad to see you are not one of them,"

"How can you tell that so easily?" Fruity asked looking to me.

"It's rather simple really, she’s a grey striped zebra, the Illustrious Moon zebras are black striped,"

"Oh, that is simple."

"Plus, you don't look like you're from around here are you, where are you from?"

"Err, well we came from Manehattan," I answered.

"Yeah, on the train that blew up the other day,"

"Glad to see you got out of that ok, we are sorry again for any inconvenience we may have caused you and is there anything we can do for you since we’re here?"

"Err, yes there is actually, we are trying to get into the city, there is a place we need to visit but we don't know where the entrance is."

"Ah, this wall was here long before we expanded into the region but there is a gate, if you follow the wall east, you'll come to a farm run by us, if you don't disturb the farmers you'll be fine, follow the wall past the farm and you'll find yourself in a little residential area, the wall will lead you to a building that specialises in the manufacture and sales of guns and just around the corner from that, you'll find a gate that'll let you into the city. Just so you know that you are in the right place there will be a partially collapsed ramp to an overpass facing the gate. Oh, be cautious after you pass the farm, raiders have been known to wander into that area from time to time." The mare soldier explained.

"Thank you so much,"

"No problem, look after yourselves." And with that the two troopers continued on their patrol and I let out a sigh of relief, for a minute there I thought they were gonna attack me. Actually, come to think about it, my threat warning never flashed when they showed up.

"Well, they were nice," Fruity said in a slightly sarcastic tone. "So, we should be wary of black striped zebras huh, well I'll be keeping my eyes open,"

"They were nice actually, they did apologise and they did tell us how to get to a way in," I chided.

"Alright, alright, you're right, I'm sorry."

I nodded with a smile as we turned to our right and began to follow the wall. The troopers weren't lying, within a few minutes of walking and after following the wall around a bend we came to a large open section of land with a chain link fence surrounding it with several lots of crops growing inside as well as several greenhouses, huts and guard towers.

"This must be the farm." I said, stating the blatantly obvious.

"Should we walk around, or should we cut through the farm?" Fruity asked as we came to a gap between the fence and the wall of junk.

"Hmm, the troopers said if we don't disturb the farmers we should be fine, plus it’s gonna be dark soon and I don't think we want another horde of geckos chasing us again,"

"Through the farm it is then; I really don't fancy being a mutant lizard's dinner." Fruity remarked with a touch of humour to his voice.

I chuckled at my friend's wording and squeezed through the gap in the fence with Fruity following close behind. We walked close to the wall to keep out of the way, but my mechanical vision had reticules popping up to highlight armed soldiers in the guard towers who had seen us and were watching us while my reticules were marking them as possible threats due to them being armed. We got about halfway through the farm before a trooper wearing a metal helmet with "MP" on it approached us in a similar get up to the other troopers and carried the same type of battlesaddle and weapon.

"Halt, state your business in the Sharecropper Farm," He demanded.

I quickly took my stetson off so we didn't have a hostile repeat of our first meeting with the Desert Rangers. The trooper's eyes widened slightly but then he seemed to relax as he saw I didn't belong to this tribe they were having problems with.

"We are only passing through sir," I said calmly. "We are just trying to get inside the city before it gets dark."

Fruity nodded in agreement.

The soldier stood there examining us for a moment longer before he nodded. "Very well, keep to the wall and please do not get in the way of these hard working farmers." He said authoritatively.

"No problem, we'll be out of here before you know it." Fruity said as he continued on.

The trooper nodded and turned around to return to his post while I hurried to catch up with my friend. We marvelled at the crops that had been grown here, last I remember about this area it was built up with I think a casino and hotel or was it an office block? I couldn't remember but anyway, the land was all concrete and what not before, but now it was open land. I suppose something had happened to destroy the buildings here and removed them to allow for this land. Fruity himself looked impressed as we passed a field of corn.

"Looks like the Marejave didn't get hit by a balefire missile or anything if there are crops growing here," He commented more to himself but with my ears I heard him clearly.

"What do you mean?" I asked confused.

"Huh, oh, well the bombs that rained down all over Equestria didn't just destroy everything, they also poisoned the land, and nothing good can grow out there, what does grow is harmful to us. If you are lucky enough to find a patch of land that isn't poisoned you can be a well made pony, but nine times out of ten somepony or something will find you and kill you to take that pure spot for themselves. These ponies are lucky to have these Desert Rangers looking out for them."

I was horrified to learn that, the world hadn't just been bombed to buggery but also poisoned. Just what the hell transpired the day the bombs fall, did we launch everything we had as well? No wonder this world was so messed up and thank Celestia that we have some ponies like these Desert Rangers doing something to actually help better the world. I’m sure there are bands of good ponies in the wastelands outside of the Marejave doing their bit too but it's been a hundred and ninety years since the war ended, at least something should have been done by now.

I shook my head to jar away the thoughts of the dead world just poisoning more ponies and the bad natured just ruling over it with nothing more than bloodlust and fear.

"I hope this world recovers." I muttered to myself as we squeezed out of the farm through another gap between the fence and wall.

The troopers had said the area past the farm was a residential area, and I had assumed it was an area ponies were actually still living in. My assumption was wrong. It was just like the suburb we entered the ruins in, all abandoned and destroyed houses and many of them were nothing but the four corners and the chimney stack. Unfortunately, as we walked along the cracked and ruined roads closest to the wall, we still saw the evidence of the death that befell the citizens who had tried to flee as their skeletons still lay where they fell all those years ago.

"I thought the stables were meant to save lives, why are there so many dead lying in the streets?" I asked in disbelief at the sheer number of skeletons I had seen since I woke up from stasis.

"Stables, there were only so many and only good for a few hundred each, they couldn't save everypony. The sad fact about the war's end was millions died in a matter of hours." Fruity sighed.

I felt horrible, the company I worked for before the end couldn't save as many ponies as I had hoped. They built over a hundred of those stables and... Yes, Fruity was right. Even with the hundred odd shelters built they could only save a few hundred each; even with all those stables together, they couldn't even save a million ponies, probably not even five hundred thousand. I couldn't even think about just how many ponies died that day, just the thought was actually making me feel queasy.

"Hey, is that the gun store that the troopers mentioned?" Fruity asked, pointing to a building that was surrounded by a fence that looked entirely intact and with what looked like a stall out in front of it and above that it a large sign that read. "Ironshod Firearms."

I was glad for Fruity interrupting my thoughts there and looked up to the building that he indicated as we began to walk past it. Our answer came as we began to pass the booth, it was a scratch built booth that sort of looked like something you'd see in a post office with the glass front with the holes in the glass so you could talk to whoever was behind the glass and a large enough slot at the bottom so that an item can be pushed through it. Inside, there was a familiar robot standing inside it, it was one of those Ponytrons, a robot made in the shape of a pony although its head looked like a large light bulb and this one appeared to be in a military green paint scheme. Behind it were a couple of weapon racks full of guns. I felt a pain in the back of my head as my brain became flooded with information regarding each gun on the rack.

"Multiple weapons detected...

Weapon 1: IF-9 Combat Shotgun, drum fed 12 gauge semi-automatic shotgun.
Weapon 2: IF-44 SMG, 10mm sub-machinegun.
Weapon 3: IF-64 Assault Rifle, 5.56mm automatic rifle.
Weapon 4: IF-80 Hunting Shotgun, pump-action 20 gauge shotgun.
Weapon 5: IF-84 Riot Shotgun, 12 gauge automatic shotgun.
Weapon 6: IF-100 Anti-Material Rifle, 50 calibre rifle, battlesaddle mountable."

I groaned, holding the back of my head as my brain was flooded with the weapons names and all their little details. This was far more information being shoved into my head than I'd ever had to deal with before. I really didn't want to know about all these guns and what they were.

"Crystal, are you ok?" Fruity asked in concern.

"Hmm, yeah, just a sudden headache, that's all, nothing to worry about, I'm ok now." I said reassuringly as the flood of knowledge subsided.

Fruity stared at me for a moment before he looked away. He isn't stupid, he must suspect something. I gotta tell him the truth, but how do I tell him that I'm a machine? I want to tell him but I can't see a way I can tell him without me hurting him and freaking him out. However way I looked at it, the result would be bad. I pushed my fears and desire to reveal the truth to the back of my mind for now, it wouldn't do any of us any good to be distracted right now or to make him worry even more about me.

We rounded a corner in the wall and came to a large gate that had a few ponies standing outside it as if standing guard in what looked like casual clothing.

"Are they ok?" Fruity asked as he stepped up to my side while staring at the ponies leaning against the gate.

I looked down at my EFS and nodded. "Yeah, my EFS is showing them with white tags so they are non-hostile," I was about to turn towards the gate when a red tag appeared on my compass on the opposite side. Whirling my head around to face the hostile target's direction, I saw a single raider approaching. Knowing that the only good raider is a dead raider I bent my head down to my right foreleg and pulled my revolver out of its holster. Fruity must have noticed the raider as well as he was now flapping his wings so he could use his forehooves to use his plasma rifle, but the three ponies by the gate rushed up to our sides with IF-44's clenched in their jaws and all ready to take this raider down. Overkill much?

The three ponies that had rushed to our sides were all Earth Pony mares of similar colours to each other. The closest pony to me nodded and then she and the other two began to fire their automatic weapons. Fruity fired off bolts from his plasma rifle and I closed my left eye to aim down the sight of my revolver and began to pull the trigger. I still don't like the idea of killing another pony but it was the way of the wasteland, Fruity made that clear and if I were to survive, even with his help out here I had to look past my pre-war morals.

This raider was on his own, so the hail of lead and plasma tore him apart, we all scored hits on him. The raider didn't even have a chance to get anywhere near us or mount a defence. The final blow was when one of Fruity's plasma bolts struck him in the chest and he horrifically dissolved into a pile of goo which was an instant reminder of the day I met him with his skeleton the last thing to fall apart.

"You gotta learn to conserve your ammo Crystal," Fruity said as he slung his rifle under his wing again.

"Huh?" I mumbled around the mouthgrip. I sat down on my haunches and spat the revolver out and into my forehooves and pushed the cylinder out to check my bullets and gasped in surprise as all the bullets were spent, nothing but empty shells lay in the cylinders. I didn't even realise I had fired off all six rounds. "You're right, I need to pay more attention to my ammo count."

The three ponies turned around to head back to the gate, not even bothering to say anything to us which I found a little rude. After reloading my revolver with one of the few speed loaders I had left, we followed after them. The way they took up position on either side of the gate told me they were guarding the gate, most likely from ponies like the one that got liquefied.

"Excuse me, may we enter please?" I asked politely.

The three of them looked at each other with tilted heads for a moment before looking back at us. Each one stared at us for a little while, which made me feel uncomfortable until the mare standing on her own opposite the other two banged on the large gate with her hind hoof a couple of times. For a minute, nothing seemed to happen at all, but then there was a teeth grating metallic screeching as the large gate began to slide open. The gate revealed a street that looked as run down as the outside, which confused me.

"Welcome to Hayside travellers," The guard who kicked the door greeted us.

"Thank you."

To be honest, I didn't know what to expect upon walking through the gate and into the area that the guard called Hayside. Side note, my Pipbuck also said we had discovered the location marked as Hayside, plus it also had logged finding the farm and Ironshod Firearms, I just hadn't noticed until now. I thought the intact portion of what remained of Las Pegaus was behind this wall, but this area didn't look that much better than outside the wall as all the buildings lining the street were run down and half destroyed. However, there was one key difference. Outside the wall, there were barely any ponies at all walking around but inside the wall, I was seeing as many ponies as I used to see walking the streets in the afternoon from my bedroom window.

The gate screeched closed as we stepped through the threshold and we noticed two more mares dressed the same as the other three outside standing on either side of the gate. Were they some sort of guard or something? There were also a couple of ponies in different kinds of armour standing near the gate and one of these armoured ponies, a large slate grey stallion dressed in a form of metal armour approached us.

"You two look new in Hayside, you may be interested in hiring me to escort you to where you need to go. Hayside isn't a friendly place, especially when the sun goes down and for a pretty little mare like yourself." He said with a confident smirk which to me only creeped me out. Fruity snorted angrily at that.

"Um, no thanks we're good," I said, moving to avoid the large stallion.

"I really must insist," He grumbled with a frown. Wow this guy wasn't taking no for an answer was he?

"She said we are good mate," Fruity frowned in annoyance as he stepped up to my side.

"This town is full of thugs, you'll be mugged before you can even turn the corner," He persisted while also moving one of his large forelegs to block us.

"Touch her and that hoof will never touch anything again." Fruity growled and swung his plasma rifle around so it was resting against his chest.

The large stallion took the hint and backed off, but he grumbled something under his breath. It was too muffled for me to hear him but it sounded bad and gave me a bad feeling. Once Fruity was sure we were out of earshot of him he let out a soft growl. "Creepy git,"

"Yeah." I agreed as we walked up the cracked road. Despite the run down look of this area it still looked to be a fully functional town with all the ponies wandering around and as we turned a corner we began to see market stalls selling this and that to cater to nearly everypony's needs.

As we began to move through the crowded market, my sensitive ears began to pick up the mutterings of ponies who were now staring at us or rather me. I sighed and threw my head back so that my stetson would slide down the back of my neck to keep my head in clear view as to show everypony that I wasn’t a member of this Illustrious Moon Tribe. As soon as my stetson slipped down my neck, the suspicious mummers turned to sighs of relief and returned to their normal banter. Was the difference between black and grey stripes that easy?

We had a surprise when we came to the end of the market street because after we pushed our way out of the crowd, we nearly fell over a stall being manned by a griffon of all things. I, being a right filly, let out a surprised squeal and hid behind Fruity. Memories of the attack on the train were still fresh in my mind, especially the unintentional barbeque.

"What's with her?" The griffon grunted sourly.

"Griffons attacked the train we travelled on," Fruity answered plainly.

"Ah, well not all of us are cunts like that," He said before gesturing to his stall that had a selection of meats, eww. "May I interest you in some fresh meat?" He asked, almost hopeful. "I know you ponies are Omnivorous."

I gagged at the red raw meat on the table and quickly made my way away from the stall. Just as well too as the smell of the sun baked meat had hit me too.

"Err, no thanks." Fruity said before he quickly flapped his wings and flew over to me.

Once I was sure we were out of eye sight I dry heaved a couple of times. The sight and smell of that stall knocked me sick, but the worst thing about that was once I recovered from the sickening feeling, I felt hungry. To make matters worse, my traitorous synthetic stomach decided to growl for nourishment. The icing on the cake was the flash of my power level reading, forty seven percent. Wow that was a fifty percent drop throughout our trip through the MASA.

Hayside was pretty big despite the wall that surrounds it and there were a fair few ponies living in what I must now have to call a slum. It looked so run down like the wasteland outside it, how could it be any better but there were more ponies here than out there. We walked for over an hour as we followed the roads that we thought would take us in the general direction of the city centre or the Strip as it was called back then, not sure if it still is now but we'll see. Our destination was the Fluttershy Hospital that was built within the central area of the city so the Strip is where we need to go before we can find the hospital. We emerged from our hour trek through the streets on a wide and long road. Looking left we could see that this long street seemed to curl to the right slightly and we could see another wall at the end and another gate but more importantly we could see the towers that still stood in the central portion of Las Pegasus, um, I mean New Pegasus. So this road will take us right to it, finally. Looking right we could see the road stretched on a little further down before ending at the wall of junk and another large gate guarded by more of those mares. While looking right my eyes fell upon a primary school across the road from us, a familiar primary school.

"Broadwalk Avenue Primary School." I said out loud to myself.

"Come again?" Fruity asked.

"Err, just reading the school's sign out loud." I quickly said while also making sure the sign was still on the metal pole beside the front gate, which thankfully it was. The feeling of guilt weighted heavily in my chest as yet again I lied to my friend. The more I lie to him the more it was going to hurt him when he finds out the truth. Oh yeah, it's not a matter of if, it's a when. There was no way in hell that I was going to be able to hide what I am to him forever, I think he was already getting suspicious.

Well, a good thing about where we are right now was that I knew exactly where we were. Broadwalk Avenue Primary School was where I went to school when I was just a filly. Looking back to our right and to the wall, I could just about see the roofs of houses beyond the wall. That would be the residential area that I lived in until my last days. It did feel good to finally be back on familiar ground.

"Ok Fruity, I know exactly where we need to go from here now," I said with confidence.

"Oh really?"

"Um yeah, I studied a map of Las Pegasus while in the stable." Ok that wasn't entirely a lie as I had studied a map before all this.

"Alright then, lead the way." Fruity smiled.

I was about to turn to begin down Broadwalk when new contacts appeared on my EFS and they were moving quickly. Curious to see what these none hostiles were I looked back over to the old school and two foals rushed out from behind a corner of the building and into the street looking around as if searching for something.

"Where is it Skippy?" The blank flank filly asked excitedly.

"I dunno, Chaz, he must be hiding again," The colt replied as he walked over to a bunch of tall grass. "Ah, found him."

There was a high pitched squeak and a hairless animal rushed out of the grass and into the street towards us. My eyes widened with horror as the closer the animal got the more I realised what it was. The long skinny tail, the large dish like ears and the large buck teeth. I let loose a high pitched scream of terror and tore down the road as fast as I could to get away from the mutant rodent.

"It's a fucking rat!" I screamed.

I didn't stop running until I nearly crashed into a huge robot that looked a lot like a Sentry Drone that was standing guard at the get to the inner city. I sat down hard panting hard after making sure the drone was non-hostile which thankfully it was. Oh Celestia I hate rats, they freak me out totally, rats.

"Holy fuck you can run," Fruity moaned as he landed behind me and panted for breath. "What the hell was that?"

"I... I'm scared of rats," I admitted.

"You're scared of rats, really, and the MASA HQ wasn't scary?"

"Having a phobia isn't the same thing Fruity." I chided with a huff.

The purple pegasus blinked. "What's a phobia?" He asked.

"I... what?" I balked, not expecting him to ask that.

He just stared, waiting for an answer.

"A phobia is a fear, it can be of anything, um, for example, a fear of spiders is called "Arachnophobia." I explained. Fruity's expression contorted with realisation. "Yea, I suffer from Musophobia, a fear of mice and rats. I could be the biggest and hardest bitch around and still scream like a little filly if I saw a mouse or a rat."

"Ah, ok, I'm sorry," Fruity apologised with his ears drooping.

"Oh, it's ok, you didn't know," I said gently nuzzling him which seemed to perk him up a bit. "C'mon, we are nearly there, just through this gate and it'll be like ten minutes until we find the hospital."

The purple stallion nodded and we approached the gate. We had to jump back as the large sentry blocked our path.

"Halt, submit to a credit check or present your passport before proceeding to the gate," It buzzed in a more stable and authoritative tone than the ones from the MASA did. "Trespassers will be shot." It then warned.

"Um, ok." I simply said, not knowing what else to do.

The machine rolled towards us, making me feel nervous as it towered over us. Its two red eyes on its head scanned over us both before it beeped in a low tone.

"Insufficient funds, please come back when you have enough caps to meet minimum entrance allowance." It droned.

We need a minimum amount, since when did we need a minimum amount of money to go to casinos or to even get into the city for that matter?

"What's the minimum amount?" Fruity asked.

The machine didn't respond for a moment before it then answered in the same monotone voice as before. "Minimum allowance required is three thousand caps."

We didn't even have a thousand left between us after we bought our clothes and supplies. Where the hell were we going to get three thousand caps from?

"OUT OF MY WAY!" A stallion yelled as he pushed passed me and ran for the gate.

"Exterminate." The large robot said as it turned around and unloaded its miniguns into the stallion before he could even make it to the gate.

"Oh shit!" Fruity cried out.

The robot wasn't kidding about shooting trespassers. That stallion must have thought he could get to the gate while we had it distracted. Well, we certainly aren't going to get through the gate with that robot there and something is telling me there is more inside.

"We're gonna have come back when we have enough bits, err, I mean caps." Shit, now I was just getting careless, Fruity was really going to suspect something if I kept slipping up like this.

"Well, we can go on a scavenging hunt and sell the shit we find, there are plenty of caps in salvage, it's pretty much how most ponies make a living these days. Trading shit for shit... hehe." Fruity suggested before he started chuckling.

"That's true I suppose, we just need to find a trader so we can sell some of the things we found from the MASA HQ."

Fruity nodded in agreement and we turned around and started to walk back down Boardwalk. In my panic to get away from the giant rat, yes, giant, it was a big as a dog, I didn't pay attention to all the buildings lining the road. Most of the buildings towards the gate to the Strip were more intact and maintained than the ones where we first entered the avenue on and both sides had small gambling houses, hotels and bars.

We could hear a commotion inside a building we were walking past. Curious, we stopped and looked through the window but it was no use as the window was so grimy we couldn't see anything. Looking up, I saw the building's sign which read "Sinful Wrangler, Casino and Hotel".

"Somepony doesn't sound happy in there." Fruity stated just as the window exploded outwards and a dead pony body flew out of it covered in lacerations.

"Holy balls!" I shrieked as we dropped to the floor to avoid the glass.

"What the hell?" Fruity exclaimed at the same time.

With the window broken, we could hear the shouts of some pony screaming about somepony being a backstabber and going back on a deal while whoever was being shouted at was replying in a cool calm voice and was saying things along the lines of the one shouting being a simple fool blinded by greed. There was then the sounds of breaking wood and glass before another body of a stallion came flying out the window. The body landed with a thud and then it groaned, which told us the stallion was still alive. We were frozen in place by the spectacle as we watched the hurt stallion get up. He noticed us almost immediately.

"You didn't see anything." He growled before he turned tail and ran with a limp down the road before disappearing around a street corner. His departure was signalled by the sound of a motor revving up along with a high pitched screech and a scream of agony. What the hell was going on in there? We were about to get up to make our escape when a third stallion sailed out the window and landed on the dead body of the first and groaned in pain from his trip. Our attempt to make our escape was again halted when we began to hear the clip clop of hooves when everything went silent. The sounds were a little odd, as we got the three normal clip clop of hooves and then, when it was the fourth hoof to fall, we heard a metallic clink. My curiosity was out weighing my fear and need to run, I wanted to see who this pony was who had defeated four stallions and not to mention thrown three of them out the window. I was half expecting the owner of the clip clopping hooves to jump out the window, but instead, he opened the door and calmly strode out. I wasn’t expecting the kind of pony who had just stepped out onto the street.

The pony was an Earth pony stallion, his fur was purple and his mane and tail were jet black and were well groomed and shined in the afternoon light. His mane and tail were long and straight as well. He wore a neutral expression on his handsome face, while his purple eyes were locked on the groaning pony that had flown out the window earlier. I was totally surprised to see the size of this stallion, he was huge. I had seen Princess Celestia in the flesh when I was a filly when she visited the hospital I was in one day and I could remember how she towered over everypony around her and that is exactly what I see with this purple stallion, he stood at least just as tall as she did. His cutie mark resembled two chainsaws formed into a cross that decorated his flanks. He wore a clean and well looked after suit with a long tail to cover his rump with a white shirt underneath and a red tie. Pinned to the collar of his suit, he had a gold pin that were the initials, P-K. The most striking thing about this giant pony, however, was the source of the clanking noise when he walked. His right foreleg from the knee down was mechanical. The limb looked like an advanced cybernetic prosthetic, similar to some that I saw being tested at the hospital before I supposedly died. The lower half of his leg seemed to have a seam that ran down the middle, even across his hoof which seemed to pretty much split the lower portion of his leg in half.

The huge stallion reached down with his organic forehoof and pulled up the injured stallion with great strength before turning around and pushed him up against the hotel wall between the door and window. His neutral and calm expression never changed as he did so which made him seem even more intimidating. He lifted the stallion higher and then positioned his hind legs as if to balance himself before he lifted his cybernetic leg off the floor and held it out, drawing the injured stallion's attention.

"Where is Tango Jack's safe house?" He asked calmly. Despite his voice being calm, it carried with it an edge that was threatening and it worked to scare the stallion as he began to tremble against the wall with his hoof holding him up, but he didn't answer.

The large stallion sighed with disappointment, and his robotic leg split down the middle. A chainsaw with teeth that looked like claws shot out in a similar fashion to the metal claws of some comic book hero I had read about.

"Where is he?" The stallion demanded with a little more force, and to punctuate his desire for the answer, the chainsaw revved and began to spin. The captive began to sweat as the tall stallion drew his chainsaw leg closer and closer.

"HE HAS A SAFE HOUSE IN THE HILLS EAST OF NEW PEGASUS." The captive stallion sung like a canary.

"Thank you," The large stallion said before he stopped his chainsaw and retracted it back into his leg, stepping back. When he removed his forehoof from the pinned stallion, he fell to the floor and looked up at the tall pony in confusion. "Now get out of here, see this as a sign to do better in your life."

"Wha...?" The dropped stallion croaked out as the tall one turned his back to him.

"GO!" The tall stallion said calmly even though his voice was slightly more raised in volume as he turned to look back at him. "Before I change my mind." And with that, his leg opened again and the claw like teeth popped out from the open seam without the chainsaw fully deploying.

"Oh fuck no." The injured stallion cried and ran away the best he could.

The large purple stallion smiled as he watched the pony he spared run and retracted his chainsaw teeth again. He then looked around and then noticed us huddled together by the broken window.

"Oh, excuse me, I hope I didn't accidently hit you with one of those hunters," He said as he approached us.

"Um, no you, err, missed us... that was you?" I asked dumbfounded.

The large stallion simply nodded in his reply.

"What the hell was all that about away?" Fruity asked and gestured to the dead stallion laying in the middle of the road.

"The group of hunters I had hired got a little greedy and decided to push their luck by upping their prices after a few months of them working for me. I decided their new charges were unacceptable and decided to fire them earlier than I intended. They believed me to be going back on the deal we had set up when I hired them and so they attacked me. I simply defended myself,"

"Wow ok, then why did you let that one go?"

"He was new to the group and joined after I hired them. Because these hunters were bad natured ponies I made sure to keep an eye on them to be sure they didn't do anything I didn't like, and thankfully that stallion hadn't done anything wrong since he joined. I simply needed to scare him enough so he would reveal their boss's hideout location. Since his body isn't here I can safely assume he got away."

We nodded to confirm the large stallion's assumption.

"Oh how rude of me, my name is Motor Runner," He introduced himself with a slight bow.

"Um, I'm Crystal Eclair and this is..." I said introducing myself and then gestured with a foreleg to my pegasus friend.

"Tooty Fruity is the name but please call me Fruity." Fruity said with a smile and a tip of the hat.

I noticed the ever so gentle rise in Motor Runner's eyebrow upon hearing my name but other than that he showed no other reaction. This guy has some serious control of his emotions.

"Pleased to meet you both, I can safely assume you are both from out of town?"

"Are we that easy to notice?" Fruity asked.

"You are not, the Marejave seems to be a safe haven for Dashites such as yourself," Upon hearing the word Dashite, Fruity frowned and rolled his hips so that his duster fell over his flank completely. "Touchy subject, I apologise," He then looked down at me. "It is easy to tell with you considering the local zebras of this region are black striped."

"Are there seriously no grey stripes out here?" Fruity asked, not convinced.

"Locally no, the only grey stripes you'll see are travellers like yourselves," Motor Runner looked at us in thought for a moment. "You couldn't get into the Strip could you?" He asked as if he already knew the answer.

"No, that tin can said we had..." Fruity cleared his throat and in a mock robotic voice repeated what it said to us. "Insufficient funds, please come back when you have enough caps to meet minimum entrance allowance."

I sighed with disappointment. "Yeah, we’re about two thousand caps short,"

"Hmm, I might be able to help you out with that if you don't mind doing a little job for me,"

"What is it?" I asked with my ears perking up with hope rising in my heart.

"Tango Jack, the second pony I threw out of the window. If you track him down and kill him, I will pay you five thousand caps," Motor Runner paused for a moment. "He is a loose end that needs to be tied up."

"FIVE THOUSAND?" Fruity gasped out in amazed shock.

"Yes, his death will certainly be worth that little sum,"

"Little?!" Fruity gasped again.

"You want us to just murder him?" I asked, a little horrified that somepony was asking us to go out and kill somepony for money.

"Crystal, remember what I told you about the way of the wasteland?" Fruity whispered. I sighed and nodded, I was prepared to kill that lone raider as it was the way things went, so I suppose this was no different. But to just go and murder some random pony? I think I would need a reason to justify the need to have him killed. I wanted to keep some of my morals.

"You said these hunters you hired were bad ponies before, what has this Tango Jack done, the worst thing he's done?" I asked.

Motor Runner's calm demeanour faded, and he scowled with an angry look which made the tall handsome stallion look very intimidating. "He has sexually molested small fillies no older than five years old in the past." He said bluntly with an edge of anger.

My eyes widened in horror at his words. This Tango Jack was a paedophile. If there was one thing I couldn't stand in pre-war or post-war Equestria, it was ponies who abuse foals in such a way. I felt a righteous fire burn in my heart and I knew what I was going to do.

"I accept your offer." I said standing up.

Motor Runner's calmness returned as he smiled. "Excellent. Tango Jack has a safe house in the hills to the east of New Pegasus. Once you've taken care of him, retrieve the gold pendent he has around his neck as proof. You will find me in the Golden Oak's Hotel just up the road here. Good luck Crystal and Fruity, and thank you." He bowed slightly and turned to walk up the road to the hotel he mentioned.

"Wow Crystal, I wasn't expecting you to agree so quickly," Fruity said as we set off again down the road toward the eastern gate and the residential district beyond it.

"This Tango Jack is a paedophile Fruity, a true monster." I growled. "He abuses little foals! That’s a serious crime."

The pegasus frowned. "True, in the Enclave, ponies convicted of paedophilia were sentenced to life imprisonment or executed," He nodded. "Let's go bag ourselves a monster and a hefty reward."

I didn't like the idea of killing this pony for a reward. For me, just getting rid of him so he couldn't hurt another foal would be reward enough. I seriously couldn't understand how anypony could have sexual desires for little foals, it's sickening.

We started to pass the school again when I heard a squeak from a patch of brown grass from the school's yard, and that giant rat jumped out.

"It's the fucking rat again!" I screamed and sped off down the road to the gate while also repeating, "Gross!" over and over again. Celestia have mercy I hate rats. I blushed with embarrassment as I could hear Fruity laughing his head off as the mares manning the gate opened it to let us out.

The sky was starting to darken now as the sun began to dip lower in the sky as it headed towards the western hills. We were going to need to find a place to stay and... I froze when we came to a road sign.

"Welcome to Chadderton Residential District."

"Home." I said out loud to myself and began to follow the roads.

"Huh, what, Crystal, hey wait, where are you going?" Fruity asked as he quickly trotted after me.

I didn't respond, I was like in a trance as I retraced ancient steps from all those times coming home from school. The route still memorised in my brain as I followed the roads, turning this way and that when I needed to and going straight on when I didn't. Fruity continued to try and get my attention the entire time, but I was on autopilot as I followed my memorised route back to the house that I had lived in for the good part of twenty one years. I came to a stop as I beheld my old family home, still standing and looking in pretty good nick considering how long it had stood here rotting for.

"We, we will rest here for tonight." I said, my voice cracking as a flood of emotion began to well up inside me while I still looked at the house.

"Crystal, are you ok?" Fruity asked sounding very concerned as I began to approach the front door.

I didn't answer him as I tried the door knob, the door was locked. On either side of the front door, there were two flower pots that now held nothing but dead weeds. I gently pushed the left flower pot over and the spare key was still there. It was a surprise that in the hundred and ninety years I have been away, no one had moved the flower pot and found the key. I picked up the house key and inserted it into the lock and turned the key. The lock groaned in protest as it hadn't been used for nearly two centuries, but there was a satisfying click and the door opened.

"Ok, how did you know there was a key there?" Fruity asked confused.

"A hunch?" I simply said before I pushed the door open.

We entered my old family home. I was hit by the smell of decay, but thankfully, it wasn't the sort of decay that involved a rotting body. In front of us were the stairs leading upstairs, and next to them was the hall leading to the kitchen. On our left, a door hung on one hinge and was open and we could look into the spacious living room and to our right the door to the dining room had fallen free and lay on the floor. I walked through the door to the living room and skirted around the smelly old sofas and pushed open the door at the back of the room that opened into the kitchen.

"It's how I remember." I whispered as I walked up to the back door and tried it. The door knob turned but it wouldn't budge, so this door is locked too which means nopony had been in my house for nearly two hundred years.

"Hot damn," Fruity whistled. I turned around and found him with his face buried in the large Smeg brand fridge freezer. "Got plenty of food in here that was packed full of those special preservatives so this stuff never goes off,"

"T-take what you want." I said feeling a deep sadness start to settle over me and left the kitchen, into the hall to the stairs and slowly climbed the stairs. The stairs groaned in protest with my extreme weight, but they held. From the top of the stairs my parents room was to my right, the bathroom in front of me and there were two doors to my left, one lead to the small spare room and the other to my bedroom.

My heart rate began to rise, and my breath began to come in quick breaths as I edged my way towards my bedroom door and gently nudged the grimy white door open with my nose and beheld my old room. The wall paper that decorated the room used to be a light pink with flower patterns but now it had lost much of its colour and in several areas, it was now peeling from the walls. The ceiling showed several damp patches and the paint was also peeling off where it had been damp.

I walked over to the steel framed bed I once slept in and sat down on the old dusty mattress. The bed groaned under my weight, but it held. My gaze then settled on my nightstand and on the small photo frame that still sat there. I reached over and picked it up. The picture frame was marred with grime and the picture below the glass couldn't be seen. My tail curled around and I used it like a brush and cleared away the decades of dust that had collected until the photo could be seen. I smiled despite myself at the memory of my mother buying a load of these enchanted picture frames that would preserve the picture inside forever while I gazed at the pink furred and yellow maned crystal pony in the photograph that was holding a smaller version of herself in her forelegs in a hug, but the smaller pony was all dull and lacked the crystal pony shine.

"Oh mother." I croaked before I began to sob openly.

"Hey Crystal, here you are, that fridge is full of good..." He stopped as he noticed my sobbing. "Stuff... Hey, what's the matter?" He asked in concern as he walked over to the bed.

"Oh Fruity," I cried with pain and grief heavy in my voice. "I've lost everypony, my mother, my father, my grandparents, everypony I ever knew." I wailed.

"Whoa, hey, that ain't true," He said softly as he climbed onto the bed beside me and wrapped his wings around me in a hug and gently pulled me close to him. "You still have me." Yeah for how much longer?

I was glad that whoever made me put tear ducts in my eyes as the tears were now flowing freely. I was crying my heart out now as the full level of my despair, hurt and anguish began to flow out of me. I couldn't control my emotions, I needed comfort. I wrapped my forelegs around Fruity and hugged him tight, also being careful not to crush him with my mechanical strength and wept on his shoulder.

"Hey, um, everything will be ok." Fruity said trying to comfort me as he also wrapped his forelegs around me, double hugging me with his wings as well.

I nuzzled into his neck as I sniffled and then looked up. Fruity looked down at me with his purple eyes and gave me a reassuring smile, the kind of smile that would tell you everything will be ok. I blinked tears out my eyes and leaned forward, surprising myself as I pressed my lips up against his, his slight goatee tickling me as I tilted my head slightly while I kissed him like I've seen so many mares do in those romance holotapes all those years ago.

I don't know what I was thinking when I kissed him, I half expected him to pull away but he didn't. He blinked in surprise with me pressed against his lips, but then he pressed his lips against mine as he returned my kiss. I felt a flutter in my heart at this, but I still felt low and miserable. I let out a soft moan as we kissed each other with more passion.

XXXXX

I woke up in my old bed early in the morning with the bright sun shining in through my grimy bedroom window. I turned my head so the blinding sun wasn't in my eyes but that resulted in my nose and mouth getting buried in a tuft of purple hair. I opened my eyes fully to see Fruity fast asleep in my single bed with me, his limbs gently wrapped around me in a gentle hold in what, if I remember the term correctly as a spoon with me being the little spoon. What did we do last night? I mentally asked myself as I gently pulled myself out of his hold and slipped out of bed. It was then that I felt a sticky sensation in my loins and my fur around my rump feeling matted.

Groaning softly with discomfort from the dried matted fur below my tail, I walked out my bedroom and into the bathroom to clean myself up while trying to remember what happened last night. I yawned as I turned the tap for the hot water, completely forgetting that there was no electricity, and that the boiler would likely not have worked for the last two centuries. I whined when nothing came out, so I then tried the cold tap, the tap shuddered and groaned before it started to spurt out some horrible looking muck before it then cleared and a steady stream of lukewarm water started to pour out. It was a pleasant surprise to know there was still water pressure. I used my nano-fibre tail to grab a wash cloth and soaked the cloth in the water before bringing it to my rear and started to clean the matted fur.

"Did I sit on something?" I asked groggily as my waking mind struggled to get through the cobwebs in my head.

Once I cleaned my rump, I felt my loins were still a bit sticky so I unconsciously brought the wet cloth to my bits and gave it a wipe with the cloth and it was then that my mind cleared when I felt the rush of sensitivity from my vulva. The rush also allowed my brain to remember the night's events.

I was feeling lower than I'd ever felt, lower than my illnesses had ever made me feel and Fruity tried to comfort me and I practically threw myself on him and kissed him. That was so unlike me. Fruity didn't push me away and he kissed me back. He said he wanted to help me and I, I dunno, I think I must have talked him into bedding me as we spent the rest of the night with me on my back and him on top of me. I never felt so good in my entire life but now I feel horrible. I practically manipulated him into having sex with me. Oh dear Luna, we had sex. No, that's the worst thing I could have let happen. I might have been able to salvage our relationship by owning up to him about what I am if we didn't but now that we have. I fear the revelation would drive him away. I couldn’t tell him now I... No, I have to. I've lied to him long enough and the fact we've had sex, it'll just make things so much worse.

This charade has gone on long enough. Telling my friend the mare he had sex with is in fact a bio-mechanism would likely break his heart and most definitely would freak him the hell out. I owe it to him now to be truthful, I can't keep this charade going any longer. For his sake and my guilt wouldn't let me lie to the pony I care about anymore. I took a deep breath to steel my nerves as I began to walk back to my bedroom. I could hear shuffling in the bedroom so I could assume he was awake now.

"Fruity, I... I got something I need to tell you." I said sombrely as I stepped onto the landing.

"*Yawn* Huh, what's up Crys?" He yawned as he appeared in the threshold to my bedroom.

"I..." I stopped and looked down as the floorboards began to creak and groan loudly before I started to hear the sound of splintering wood. I screamed as the floor suddenly disappeared below me and I fell through the hole. Broken and splintered floorboards tore at my flesh as my head collided with the broken floor. I cried out in agony as I felt a piece of wood stab into my left eye and cheek and rip back across my face. Half of my vision became purely red since the organic eye had been removed from my head as I looked down in time to see the kitchen table. I cried out again when my seven hundred and fifty pound body landed on the table and it exploded into splinters, one such splinter, a long sharp one ended up being driven through my abdomen.

I groaned and cried in pain while in the wreckage of the floor from above and the table but before I could recover, the floor beneath me collapsed again dropping me and the ruined table into the basement and I landed on a partially broken down dividing wall. My heavy weight and the brittleness of the old brick caused the brick to shatter when I landed on them, turning the brick into razor blades that sliced and cleaved through the flesh of my right hind leg. I cried with pain when I finally came to rest on the basement floor, my body cut to ribbons and buried under a pile of broken wood and brick.

"External flesh extensively damaged. Left facial area severely damaged and organic eye has been severed, multiple lacerations detected along entirety of the flesh cover. Right hind leg flesh has been severely damaged and torn from endoskeleton. Unable to regenerate in accelerated time due to low power..." It then flashed that my power level had dropped down to twenty nine percent since yesterday.

No, this was not what I wanted. This was not how I wanted Fruity to find out what I am. I wanted to tell him myself and not have him find out like this. I groaned under the rubble and shifted trying to push myself out.

"Oh fuck, Crystal, are you alright?" Fruity cried from above. There was the sound of an impact shortly after and something pushing against something else above me. I cried out, feeling the splinter lodged in my stomach push against my metal ribs as something above shifted and fell off me. I let out a cry, feeling the splinter dig deeper and I pushed up with all my strength.

"Holy shit!" Fruity cried as I burst out from the wreckage. I hid my right hind leg with my tail and kept my face turned away so he could only see the right side of my face. "Are you alright?" He asked in deep concern. His concern for me made me sigh with regret for not telling him the truth earlier. I wanted to tell him myself, not have him find out like this.

"I'm so sorry Fruity," I said, cringing as my voice held a slight electronic buzz. I could feel my many lacerations leaking blood slowly and I could feel my pulse rushing through several deep cuts on my neck. I suppose that explained the slight electronic sound to my voice right now.

"Sorry, for what?" He asked confused.

I took a deep breath and turned to look at him with both my eyes. Fruity immediately took a step back in shock, his wings flaring out and he held the look of disbelief and confusion that any pony would have on their face after seeing what he had just seen.

"I wanted to tell you, I really did." I said sadly. There must have been a breeze flowing through the house or the basement as I could feel the cool air against my body but it was more noticeable around my face because I could feel this breeze getting into my mouth. Subconsciously, I pressed my tongue to my left cheek but found it was gone and my tongue touched the metal of my upper jaw. Fruity visibly paled at seeing my tongue poke out from the hole in my face.

"You're a robot, all this time, and you’ve lied to me and..." He paled so much he almost turned white. "We... we had, oh dear Luna I fucked a robot."

"Fruity, please, I can explain," I said, feeling my right eye tearing up at what I knew was going to come as I took a step closer to the freaking out pegasus.

"No, stay away from me." He shrieked, flapping his wings and before I could say anything else, he was gone. He flew up through the hole and I heard the front door get smashed open as he fled.

"Fruity!" I cried, feeling my heart breaking as he ran. I couldn't blame him could I, I've lied to him since we met and continued to lie to him whenever I slipped up. How would you react if you found out your friend was in fact a lying and cheating robot, especially after you had sex with them? I know I wouldn't want to be around them again. I brought this upon myself, but, but I wished he were still here.

I pulled myself out of the rubble and dragged myself to the stairs and climbed them back up to the main floor. I blinked tears of sadness and regret from my right eye as I stepped out into the hall and saw the front door had been broken in half.

"Oh Fruity, I'm so sorry." I whimpered quietly as I then began to ascend the stairs slowly. They groaned ominously with each step as I climbed. I eyed the hole next to the stairs where I had fallen through and could see little bits of skin stuck to some of the jagged pieces of floor board. "I might have had a chance at salvaging my relationship with him if it wasn't for you." I growled angrily at the hole before I quickly made my way back into the bathroom.

I spent around an hour cleaning all the cuts that now littered my body and, despite the pain it caused me, cut away the floppy strands of flesh that were no longer connected to my right hind leg. I had pretty much lost eighty percent of the flesh that covered my leg. The worst part though, was pulling that huge splinter out of my stomach. It hurt like buggery and if it were an inch further down it would have impaled my synthetic stomach so I was lucky in that regard.

I looked up at the mirror on the wall above the radiator and beheld my reflection. I was a mess and I looked positively horrifying with how parts of my flesh had been ripped off to reveal the machine beneath. I stared at my face, the endoskeleton had been made to resemble an equine skeleton and I could see that I had a huge eye socket which had once held my organic eye but with it gone I could see the optical unit that was set deeply inside the socket. Every little movement my eyes made I could see the aperture on the optical unit shrink or widen as it focused.

"Why has this been done to me?"

XXXXX

A purple pegasus panted heavily with tears threatening to roll down his cheeks as he landed on the roof of a block of flats down the road from where he had just escaped. The pegasus turned around and looked down at the old residential district as the Celestia's sun climbed higher into the sky and cast its bright light over the old houses. His gaze remained locked on a house that contained the cause for his trouble.

"She's a machine... always has been," He said to himself, still staring down at the house, his keen pegasus eyes allowing him to see the house clearly and into the bedroom he spent the night in with her.

"Shit, left my stuff behind," He grumbled as it began to pace back and forth on the roof of the flats while still staring down at the house.

While he paced, he saw movement in the bedroom and then he saw her, the machine hidden by flesh as she walked into the bedroom. He had a clear view of almost the whole of the bedroom as the window dominated most of the wall. He stopped in his pacing as he keen eyes were able to see the sadness in the undamaged side of her face and he felt a little twinge in his heart at seeing her sadness.

"Why am I feeling bad for a robot?" He questioned himself. "She’s lied to me, made me feel like such a fool."

Despite the anger he felt towards the mare's betrayal, he couldn't bring himself to actually be truly that angry with her. He sat down as he watched the damaged mare pull out a bag from her duster that had been dumped on the floor when they had had their night of passion. The robotic mare opened the bag and plugged out a ruby and then, to his surprise, ate it. She then pulled out another gem, an emerald and ate that as well.

"Why am I even here watching her?" He asked himself. "Because you have feelings for her despite what she's done and what she is." His mind returned as he watched the mare's ruined face start to patch itself back together, along with the beautiful baby blue eye regrowing.

"But she's a machine..." He argued with himself. "That didn't stop several ponies back east travelling with robots they considered friends."

"But they don't fuck those robots," He shivered at the thought of mating with a robot. "But a robot wouldn't make the sounds she made now would they, no amount of programming can accurately simulate the sounds of pure pleasure."

The purple stallion opened his mouth to argue further but what his mind had said struck a note that made him look deeper into the subject. Machines had advanced greatly during the war and even after the war machines had continued to advance in some areas and he was fully aware of machine that had been designed to show emotions. These programmed emotions always seemed a little hollow and didn't carry the weight the real ones would so they were easy to tell them apart from real felt emotion. The most advanced form of this was when a rich pegasus created a synthetic pony, an android. From appearance, it looked and acted just like any other pony and was very difficult to tell the difference between it and a real pony. Even its programmed emotions were nearly spot on, it was when the machine's emotions were driven to their absolute height that the weight of the emotions seemed to just drop off.

Looking back down at the mare who's face had now been restored, despite it being bald of fur, he remembered that night they shared on that creaky old bed. What he had heard were the sounds of a mare in total bliss. It confused him, how could a machine so accurately display such emotion? No amount of programming could ever replicate that, unless it wasn't programming.

"I... I could feel a heart beating in her chest." He said standing up. "She, has bled when she got injured before, machines don't have blood. But she does. What is she?"

He shook his head as he was unable to draw himself away. His mind filled with images of her, all the times he helped her, all the times she helped him and then the image of when he met her. Scared and helpless in the middle of that intersection about to be gang raped. A machine wouldn't have acted with such fear.

He sighed deeply as he sat down and closed his eyes as he began to think about the situation. About everything they have been through together so far and what he feels towards her.

He opened his eyes to see the mare was looking sadly at her right hind leg that had not healed like her face, the look of sadness made him sigh again as he felt another twinge tug at his heart.

"Ugh, I can't believe I'm doing this," He said as he spread his purple wings. "But, I must know the truth, I... I owe her that much at least." And with that he pushed off the roof and glided back down the street towards the house.

He tucked his wings to his sides as he flew through the front door and landed on the stairs. His heart began to hammer with anticipation of the meeting he was about to have with the bionic mare. He quietly pushed open the door to her bedroom and stepped inside. Upon closing the door, the mare turned around in shock surprise at his arrival.

"Fruity, you... you came back." She almost cried.

"Crystal," He began with a slight angry tone to his voice that made the robotic mare wilt. "Before I decide what to do, I want the full truth about you, no more lies, why hide this from me?" He demanded with a stomp of his hoof.

XXXXX

I-02 IS stood looking up at the old sign to what had once been Las Pegasus.

"The city is now surrounded by a wall... Interesting." It said to itself as it looked left and right to see how far this wall extended.

The machine's audio receptors soon picked up the sound of hooves coming up from behind it and it turned around to see two ponies in military looking armour.

"Oh shit, he's an Elite Ranger. Um, what can we do for you Ranger... err, I'm sorry, what's your name?"

The machine didn't know what to say to that and so it quickly began to scan the local area for a name that sounded remotely pony-ish. Thankfully, because I-02 was a machine, he could process what he could see much faster than a normal pony, and within a second, his eyes had seen a sign that held a name that he liked. The sign he saw was for a tool shop on the other side of the large carriageway called "Nexus Tools and Hardware".

"Ranger Nexus," I-02 replied as he turned slightly. "There is something you can do for me, have you seen by any chance a grey striped zebra mare recently?" He asked.

The two soldiers blinked and then nodded. "Yes sir, last we saw of them they were looking for a way into the city. We actually told them how to find the south gate."

I-02 or Nexus nodded. "Thank you," He said as he turned to head towards the south gate.

"Would you require any assistance sir?"

"No, this is my mission to complete." Nexus said as he began to walk away.


Chapter 6: Hot Pursuit

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Fallout Equestria
Influx

Chapter 6: Hot Pursuit


48 Hours after the bombs rained their fiery death across the country.

Colonel Ironside sighed as he sat at the large computer of his secretly constructed Production Facility nestled in the ground somewhere in the Marejave. He sat staring at the large screen as it displayed the video feeds from multiple cameras on the surface. The main screen currently featured the smoking ruins of Las Pegasus while the boarders of the screen had several other smaller windows showing the feeds from the other cameras. He sighed again as he put his forehooves together and set his chin down on his hooves and elbows on the console as he watched the city burn.

For the last day, he had watched as the Marejave and the surrounding area was bombarded by Balefire Missiles and other high explosive ordinance. The sky over the most western areas of Equestria had been spared the cloud cover from the Single Pegasus Project as many of the towers in the western regions were either inactive or incomplete, which thankfully allowed Celestia's sun to continue to shine down on the land. But in the twenty four hours since his arrival at the facility, the sky had filled with the clouds of dust and smoke from the many bomb impacts and detonations along with the countless fires that now raged across the country. It was the very picture of a warzone.

"All this destruction, and for what, a lump of black flammable rock?" Ironside seethed angrily as he began to press a button with a hoof that began to cycle through the video feeds. "Or did it devolve into a religious battle to destroy an ancient evil that didn't exist anymore?" He growled and shook his head. "If we had enough time, my Infiltrators would have been able to change the course of the war." He sighed as he looked over to a closed steel door over in the corner of the room that simply had the word "Vault" stencilled onto it.

There was suddenly a bright green flash on one of the small feed windows on the main screen, and he quickly hit the button to bring up that camera. The camera feed for "Camera 7" took up the screen, showing the northern mountains just to the east of Las Pegasus with a green glow being able to be seen behind the mountains. When it subsided, a new plume of green smoke began to flow into the air to signify the impact or detonation of yet another Balefire Bomb.

"Well there goes Applewood... I'm gonna miss their movies." Ironside groaned as he made an educated guess to the location of that detonation. Applewood was the only major city north of Las Pegasus and was Equestria's film making capital thanks to Applewood's Film Industry, but as the war advanced, it also created Equestria's propaganda films. Which probably was why it got targeted, though the time of the detonation suggested a delayed timer.

He flicked back to the camera that was looking at the burning city of Las Pegasus, what had once been Equestria's entertainment capital and began to wonder why it wasn't hit by a Balefire Bomb. The Marejave had been hit by three Balefire missiles, but they were oddly not on target for anything important. The first hit empty desert in the eastern hills beyond Lake Meadow, and the other two hit somewhere south of the region which again was just empty salt flats. However, the rest of the Marejave was peppered with many smaller high yield bombs, like the one that hit the city itself and destroyed half of the once great city, from what he could see through the camera the area that contained the strip and the southernmost sections of the city remained intact.

Ironside continued to cycle through the cameras, occasionally stopping on any with something of interest before moving on to the next. He stopped on a camera that was looking at a large carriageway that would lead to or away from Las Pegasus, and he noticed several shapes moving through the haze of smoke that covered the region. "Foals..." He jeered as he zoomed in with the camera to get a better look at the shapes. They were as he assumed, ponies, following the road away from the city, looking for a safe haven. "Surely there was enough space in Super Stable 24 for a good portion of the city's populace, not to mention the other stables scattered around the Marejave." He said to himself as the camera focused, noticing that it was only a small group of about five ponies and all of them appeared to have patches of burnt or bare skin and they all looked ill. "Hmm." He pressed a couple of keys on the computer's keyboard to bring up the external sensor array and turned on the Geiger counter; it immediately jumped into an amber warning, meaning it wasn't safe to be outside. The gruff
stallion figured the winds were carrying the radioactive material from the balefire explosions over into the Marejave, dosing the area in lethal levels of radiation and those outside and not protected were doomed to perish, and since it was just an amber rad level, the experience would be slow and excruciating. He sighed and shook his head before changing to another camera feed.

"Ugh..." He heard a soft feminine groan from behind him. Slowly turning around in his chair, he observed the young unicorn mare he brought in with him start to shift on the large cushion he had dumped her on.

"It's about time." He said with impatience as he stood up and approached the mare that had now managed to pull herself up into a sitting position and was now rubbing her temples with her forehooves.

"Ugh, I've got a killer hangover," She whined.

"Good afternoon Dr Pear, glad you could join me at last," He said as he stopped just in front of her.

The mare looked up at him with confusion. "Afternoon, ugh, how long have I been asleep?"

"You have been asleep for nearly forty eight hours,"

"Forty eight hours?" The mare shrieked in surprise and stood up, her headache clearing as her body fully woke up. She opened her mouth to say something but Ironside cut her off.

"I suppose I gave her a little too much of the sedative," He said quietly to himself but loud enough for her to hear him. "It's good to see you are awake now as we still have lots of work to do with Project Infiltrator,"

"Wait, sedative and..." She trailed off as she took in the details of the control room, seeing the huge computer screen showing the burning city of Las Pegasus and then the couple of doors leading out to different places in the facility. She took notice that the doors didn't have the Stable number to which she believed she and Ironside were headed to after the call went out, and this brought forth a more important question. "Colonel, where are we?" The unknown location was enough to distract her from what she was originally inquiring.

"We my dear doctor are in the Marejave Production Facility, as scheduled," He replied.

Dr Pear's eyes widened in disbelief at what she had just been told. "Why, the war is over and Equestria has been ruined?" She cried and gestured to the computer with a hoof.

"Doesn't mean we can't guide the future into a peaceful existence," He said as he turned and headed for the door marked with the word "Vault". "Come, I'll show you the future of Equestria."

Confused, the young doctor followed her commanding officer as he pressed the door control button and stepped inside a room shrouded in total darkness. "I can't see a thing." She whined as she followed him in.

There was a click and then the hum of power flowing before bright lights began to illuminate the room. Dr Pear's eyes widened while Colonel Ironside's mouth broke into a sinister grin as he watched the young mare look up and then start to follow the lights down.

"What... what is all this?" Dr Pear croaked out as she stepped up to a railing that surrounded the walk way of the cylindrical chamber she now found herself stood in. She continued to wear her shocked expression as she stared down to the chamber floor which seemed to be several hundreds of feet further down.

"This is the Vault, where all the current standard Infiltrator Mark 2s are stored and waiting to be given your flesh binding spell to make them whole." Ironside answered.

"But I never finished the Mark 1, Crystal didn't make it here with us, she was supposed to be here too, what's going on?"

"That thing was nothing but a test bed for the real essence of this project. While you designed and built it, I improved on the design and with the advances that occurred, I have been able to eliminate the need for an organic brain all thanks to Mr Horse and his Neural Processor,"

Dr Pear bristled angrily; she hated it when Ironside referred to Crystal as nothing but a thing. "She was more than just a mere thing sir, Crystal was a computer assisted, biological, augmented lifeform, a bio-mechanism if you will, but she was still very much alive and would still have been as much as a mare as she was before or more so." She argued.

"It doesn't matter, what matters are the Mark 2s, all one thousand of them," He said sweeping a foreleg out to gesture to all the containment capsules lining the wall of the chamber from top to bottom.

"O-one, one th-thousand of them?" She gasped in total shock. "Why so many, and how?"

"How, fully automated assembly capable of producing fifty Mark 2 units per month, and why..." Ironside turned to look at Dr Pear with a dead serious look on his face. "What started as a simple resource war turned into a religious war for the Zebras who wanted nothing more than to totally destroy Princess Luna, and in turn, Princess Luna wanted to show her ability to rule by leading Equestria to victory by destroying the enemy as the only acceptable outcome was the complete elimination of the other,"

Dr Pear sat down. She never really took much notice to why the war escalated so badly so to hear that the war was to go on until only one side remained shocked her deeply.

"We needed to steer the country away from that course of action as it would lead to our demise, which it has, and when our spy Zecora was uncovered playing a double agent and murdered I began to formulate a plan. A plan to originally create the perfect, unbreakable spies. Projects Steelpony and Chimera gave us the data we needed for the endoskeletons and the organics to create the bio-mechanical infiltrators. You, my dear, put it all together with I-01, but in five years there were great advancements that allowed me to improve the design with the Neural Processor that Mr Horse was able to create from his attempt at recreating a Crusader Mainframe which has also allowed me to mass produce them. The ability to mass produce them changed the course of my original plan before the bombs fell. Maybe in the future it can still be implemented, we'll have to see how things turn out. Anyway, with the Upgrade Station to the northeast we would have had Pegasi Infiltrators, Earth Pony Infiltrators and Unicorn Infiltrators, imagine how the war would have played out if our infiltrators were instead in our very chain of command issuing commands and Intel as well as in the press and everywhere else..." He trailed off with a sinister grin.

Dr Pear's eyes widened at what he was getting at. With wide eyes, she began to look again at all the capsules lining the walls, each and every one of them had a glowing red light which meant they contained an infiltrator. She feared what the possibilities of having them all active would bring.

XXXXX

I rubbed the bald skin of my newly regrown cheek as it began to feel really itchy while I stared out of my bedroom window sadly. There was a brief feeling of relief at the sight of some familiarity from looking out of my old bedroom window and seeing nearly what I used to see when I woke up in the mornings before the bombs destroyed everything. It was still a shock to wake up to all this. The feeling quickly died though when all the details started to become clear: the broken road, the rundown houses with boarded up doors and windows, abandoned carts and carriages and all manner of debris littering the ground. With the bright morning sun shining down over the Marejave, it was easy to see just how bad things truly were.

Suddenly my bedroom door burst open and a hurt and angry looking purple pegasus stepped through.

"Fruity, you... you came back," I choked out in surprise and with an unexpected surge of happiness that he came back. I thought after what happened, he'd be gone for good.

"Crystal," He said with an angry edge to his voice which made me fold my ears back and lower my head. "Before I decide what to do, I want the truth about you, no more lies, why hide this from me?" He demanded with a stop of the hoof for emphasis.

I let out a deep sigh. I owed him that much and there was no point in damaging whatever was left of our relationship with any more lies. I raised my head with a sad look on my face as I looked right at him.

"I'm sorry I lied to you Fruity, I really am but I was told it would be in my best interest to keep that part of me a secret by a doctor pony who helped me before I met you," I began by telling him the simple reason as to why I kept my mechanical side a secret. I looked back to my bed and the photo frame sat on the nightstand and picked it up with my tail and brought it around and looked down at the image of my mother holding me. I'm starting to get used to my nano-fibre tail.

"My name is the only thing I haven't lied to you about, it is Crystal Éclair and you may not believe this but I was a Crystal Pony,"

Fruity sat down as he listened, but expectedly, upon hearing I was a Crystal Pony, he raised an eyebrow sceptically.

"I was a light pink with a light yellow mane and tail," I said as I then turned the photo frame around and held it out for him to take a hold of so he could look at it. "Daddy often would say I was a splitting image of my mother," I couldn't help the small smile that curled my lips at the fond memory of my Daddy comparing me to my Mum because in colour, I was the same.

"Wait a sec, if you were a Crystal Pony, why do you look so dull in this photo, if this really is you?" He asked as he took the photo frame from my tail's grip. Of course he'd be comparing me to my mother behind me, who had her crystal sheen. "Though you do have the same eyes," He added quietly.

"Good question," I said as I sat down myself and let out another sad sigh. "When I was born in the Crystal Empire I was a sick filly, I had several things wrong with me, the main things were brittle bones, a weak heart and a weak immune system so I wasn't always a very happy filly. Crystal Ponies get their sheen from their happiness, even as an innocent foal, when I wouldn't have cared about my illnesses or even had a care in the world. I must have had enough negativity in me to prevent me from ever taking on the crystal sheen,"

Fruity's face then contorted into shock surprise as if something suddenly just occurred to him. "Wait, you were alive before the bombs fell?"

I nodded. "I was born thirty one years before the bombs fell, but five of those years I can't account for and I'll explain that in a minute. Ok, so I was born in the Crystal Empire, and when I was five, my parents moved down here to Las Pegasus so we would be closer to more modern medical facilities, but with my medical conditions, there wasn't much more they could do for me here despite the medicines being better. I lived here, in this house for twenty one years with my mother and father. Well, until my Dad got drafted when the war got worse. He never came home," I whimpered out sadly. What was worse was we never got a letter or anything to tell us whatever happened to my Dad, but Fruity didn't need to know that.

"I went to school in that very primary school we passed yesterday until I was eleven, and I spent the next five years in a secondary school in the southern area of this district. Unfortunately, my medical problems meant I missed a lot of school and when I finished, I came out with low grades. I felt like such a failure and disappointed in myself for not doing better, not to mention I also felt like I let my parents down who supported me the entire time. Thankfully, though, I was able to find a job that didn't require much in the qualification department.

My first job was being a warehouse operative, but that didn't last long because, um, about eight months I think before the dusty environment made me have to resign due to breathing problems. Thankfully, I recovered from that but I couldn't work in that sort of environment again and after a few weeks searching for another job I got lucky and found a job from Stable-Tec as a Sales Pony where I could work from home," I looked over to my desk in the corner nestled between the wall and the window. My Stable-Tec issued terminal was still intact and looked to be in good condition and my phone was still in its holster as if waiting for me to start work again.

"At first I was practically cold calling ponies to sell them junk for Stable-Tec, but as Stable-Tec's product range increased, I began to sell more meaningful items. With the war fuelling development I soon began to see firearms, prosthetics, magical gems, talismans, potions, all sorts of things that the war was pushing for. I was making quite the pretty bit from the sales I was making but my biggest sales came when Stable-Tec asked me to start selling places to the numerous stables that they were building in the area. They even took me to the first completed stable in the Marejave, which was actually built under the streets of southern Las Pegasus which was Stable 34. It's how I knew how to explain what it was like in one to you. I had to tell customers of the interior in my sales pitch to attract paying customers,"

I sighed and looked down as I came to the worst part of my story. "By the time I turned twenty five, I had grown pretty weak and also become hospitalised at the Las Pegasus Fluttershy Hospital, which is now behind that wall. It seemed my body had had enough and was breaking down on me, making me weaker and weaker. I was told I wouldn't live to see twenty six. I surprised the doctors by actually living to see my twenty sixth birthday, but by then, I was in so much pain and so weak I couldn't do anything at all but lie there in the hospital bed. I wanted the pain to stop so much, but I didn't want to die," I shivered hard at the memory. "I've thought about death many times, even though I knew I would die when my body finally gave out on me, but it terrified me each time and I would always think about how my mum would would feel about losing me. Every time the thought of death popped into my head, it would knock me sick to the point I would feel like I would want to vomit. You would think I'd welcome death to stop the hurt but I just couldn't, I wanted to live, but my body wasn't going to last,

The last thing I remember before I woke up in Manehattan was that a dark green stallion that looked rather serious but dressed like a doctor came to visit me. What I mean by serious is that he had a short finely cut mane and his dark blue eyes seemed to cut right into me when he looked at me. Anyway, he said he was a Ministry of Peace Scientist and his uniform did have the pink medical cross with the three butterflies that I've grown so used to seeing since the war started," I looked back to my bed and my nano-fibre tail responded to my thoughts and snaked its way under the bed and felt around until I felt a familiar box and dragged it out from under my bed. I pulled the box with my tail out so it sat between me and Fruity. It was an old medical box which even had my name engraved on it, which would be further proof for him that I'm telling the truth.

"What did he want?" Fruity asked, since I got distracted with the medical box.

"Oh right, ahem, the stallion asked me if I wanted to sign my body up for medical research upon my death. He reasoned that researching the illnesses that would have killed me might help save the lives of future generations. Well, who was I to argue and I was going to die if I liked it or not. I wanted to do something good before I kicked the bucket, if researching my diseased body would help others, I was all for it. He produced a document that I didn't read as he convinced me with his pitch about helping future generations that I signed it right away. That's the last thing I remember. I went to sleep and then woke up inside a stasis pod inside Manehattan General Hospital, a hundred and ninety five years later.

I was able to work out that five years had passed from when I fell asleep by looking at a newspaper after I left the hospital, so at first I believed I had been asleep for five years in stasis, but after nearly getting gang raped and then being helped by a friendly enough doctor pony that evening, I found out then it had actually been a hundred and ninety five years that I had been in stasis. It was also by this doctor pony that I also discovered that I had changed from being a Crystal Pony to a Zebra, along with becoming this bio-mechanoid. I met you minutes after leaving his clinic. There are five years of my life I can't account for, somewhere in those five years all this had been done to me," I said while gesturing to my body as well as sticking my still exposed hind leg out.

I looked back at Fruity with a pleading look. "This is why I am here Fruity. I am sorry I lied to you, I know it was wrong of me and I hated to lie to you, but I need to know what happened to me. I need to know who did this to me and why. Why was I denied my right to die? I know I said I was terrified to die but it's a fact of life, but what's been done to me, my life has been stolen, forced to live as something else. My answers lie behind that wall. I must know, it's all I have left now in this world, to know the truth."

I sighed deeply and looked down with a sad frown as I poured my soul out to the pegasus I lied to since we met. It felt good to get all that off my chest and finally come clean to him, but now I was worried he would leave me alone in this world. I wouldn't blame him if he does, I did betray his trust after all, but I liked him and I would have liked for him to stay. I looked back up at him. He looked to be in deep thought, and he even had a hoof to his chin with his eyes narrowed as he thought. I sat in silence, afraid to make any sound or move in case I distracted him, which was getting increasing hard as my cheek was getting incredibly itchy and annoying.

Finally he looked up at me. "That is a wild story, nearly something like I'd hear from the pissheads in the bar I used to work," He said. My ears drooping as I thought he didn't believe me. "But, pictures don't lie and no matter how many times I look at the photo and you I can't tell the difference between your eyes. Plus, now a lot of the things I've noticed about you now make sense. Your name, the fact you knew the way to this house, where you knew where the key was under that flower pot and how you seemed to never get fatigued. So I can tell you are now telling me the truth and I can see why you would want to keep your, um, mechanical side a secret but you didn't have to let it get that out of hoof," He said with a hurt look.

"I know, I'm so sorry, I don't know what came over me last night, and I was so emotionally overwhelmed I didn't know what I was doing. I felt so miserable that all I wanted was to feel good. I feel horrible because I practically manipulated you into bed with me,"

"But the worst thing is, I fucked a robot," He said and shuddered. "That I thought was my friend," That hurt but justified.

"I... I'm sorry, I would still like us to be friends, maybe start over, you know, a clean slate," I said with a hopeful smile.

Fruity sighed. "I'm too soft for my own good," He whispered out loud to himself, but my sensitive audio receptors picked it up. I made no sign of hearing him though. "Even though you lied to me I wouldn't feel right just leaving you alone in this hell, you'd be torn apart before the week is out by a Radscorpion regardless of your metal skeleton so yes, we can start over," He said as he stood up and approached me with a serious face. "But from now on, let's be truthful with each other, lies gets us nowhere in this world, it's the fastest way to lose a friend, but I forgive you this once as you did have a good reason to hide it from me, but no more lies ok?"

I nodded with a smile and happy tears threatened to spill from my eyes as he then stuck out his right foreleg.

"Tooty Fruity, nice to meet you," He said, his wings gently extending as he said his name.

I sniffled and wiped away my tears and stood up, though I cringed when I heard my right hind leg grind, whir and buzz as it moved but proceeded to continue the greeting. I raised my right foreleg and pressed my hoof to his. "It's a pleasure to meet you Tooty Fruity, my name is Crystal Éclair," I said with a smile as I shook his hoof.

"So Crystal, what's your plan?" Fruity asked as he walked over to the bed where his stuff lay all crumpled up where it had been dumped.

"My plan?" I asked.

"Yeah, you want to know the truth about whatever bollocks happened to you, so what's your plan?" He asked as he began to slip back into his shirt and duster again.

"Oh well, since our trip to the MoA Hub in Manehattan was a bust our best chance to at least finding a clue lies in the Fluttershy Hospital here in New Pegasus is behind that wall. If the computer systems still have records of patients, then I can find out what happened to me there,"

"Ok, so the hospital it is, does that mean we are still going to go deal with this Tango Jack?"

"Yes, we need the caps for supplies as well as to get into the city, plus getting rid of that foal molesting pervert will be a good thing to do. I don't think I could sleep well at night to know I let somepony who sexually assaults foals get away with it," I answered with a nod as I approached the bed to also start putting on my own gear.

"Ok, well before we head out I think we should stop off at Ironshod Firearms and do some trading; we got some stuff from the MASA HQ from those raiders we found there plus I still have that Plasma Rifle I repaired that should be worth, if they value them the same out here, around eight hundred caps. You are in serious need of .357 magnum rounds by the way,"

I nodded. "Sounds good," I said, and then looked down at my old medical box. "Hmm, maybe we can turn my old medkit into a carry case so we aren't performing magic tricks by sticking our heads as deep into our pockets as we can so our heads disappear to reach something we need, it would make things easier for us," I suggested as I used my nano-fibre tail to brush off the thick layer of dust that caked the top of the old medical box.

"Good idea."

I smiled and opened the old medkit. It still had the medication I used to take on a daily basis, which were now pointless and well out of date, so I scooped them out with my tail and dumped them in the nearby rubbish bin next to my dresser and pulled my duster around so I could get into the pockets. Concentrating on all the medical items I was carrying and whatever else I had that was small, I brought them to the top of my pocket thanks to the Pipbuck's inventory sorting spell so I could then pluck them out with my mouth and put them into the carry case. Since this case was to be carried around with me due to my illnesses all those years ago, it had holes in the back for straps, and inside the case, it had a packet of adjustable straps that I tore open with my teeth, threaded through the holes and with Fruity's help got to sit on my side like a saddlebag. A good thing that would make getting the box off me easy was that the straps had jam lever buckles.

After making sure everything was secure and that we were wearing everything again, we made one last check to see if we had everything. That was until my right hind leg buzzed and whirred as it moved, reminding me that it was still exposed.

"Why hasn't the skin grown back like it has for the rest of you?" Fruity asked with a tilt of his head.

"I...like the rest of me?" I asked and then looked over myself again. Huh, how did I not notice that all those other lacerations I acquired from my tumble had healed while I told my story to him? I looked at my hind leg, unsure as to why it remained exposed. Hmm, it had the greatest portion of my flesh ripped from it, perhaps it was just taking longer. "I don't...wait," I was about to say I didn't know until an icon flashed into my vision. "Low power!" I exclaimed in annoyance and sighed. "I must have burned through those gems I ate before you arrived in healing up everything else, I guess I'll eat a couple more." I sighed as I used my tail to open my newly acquired carry case and fished out two gems, popping them into my mouth.

"How can you eat those?" Fruity asked.

"Huh, oh, um, err, oh yea, the doctor pony was able to give me some information about my mechanical body, he said I have a synthetic stomach that can magically break down food and mineral materials such as metal and gems. Gems are definitely meant to keep me powered up but metal, not sure, maybe it's to keep my endoskeleton in tip top condition, I don't know." I explained as I felt the build up of energy in my gut as my stomach processed the two gems I had munched on.

"I see, but we can't let ponies see your leg," Fruity warned.

"And I don't know how long it'll take to regrow this much flesh and we can't waste anymore time as that Tango Jack guy could leave and we could miss him,"

"We'd have to hide it somehow,"

"Yeah, but with what?" I asked, but then my eyes widened with realisation as I remembered my little collection that sat in the bottom drawer of my dresser. "Ohhh I know just the thing, I hope Mummy vacuum packed them like I asked her," I said to myself excitedly.

"Err, what's got you so excited?" The stallion asked as he raised an eyebrow at my sudden excitement.

I giggled as I took hold of the old brass handle with my mouth and began to pull and promptly bit right through it as the magic in my mouth turned the brass into a soft chewy substance. I whined with indignation as I fell to my rump while I chewed on the brass that tasted like caramel. With a gulp and a sigh I grumbled at the drawer.

"Handle break?" Fruity asked as he walked up to me.

"No, I ate it." I deadpanned before I stood up again and this time used my forehooves to grip the face of the drawer and pull it back.

I smiled happily at the sight of the many packets filled with colourful pieces of fabric.

"What's all this?" Fruity asked as he looked over my shoulder at all the vacuum packed plastic packets.

"Thank you Mum," I cooed happily as I began to pick up packet after packet and then chuck them aside as they didn't have the set I was looking for. "This is my sock collection," I admitted with an embarrassed blush.

"Sock collection?"

I giggled. "Yeah, everypony has a fetish for something right, hehe, mine was socks, couldn't get enough of them," I blushed brightly at the memories of buying sets of socks and lounging at home wearing them while I continued to rifle through the vacuum packed packets. I had gone through about a dozen before I finally found the packet that had the ones I was looking for inside them. I tore the packet open and let out a nostalgic moan at the smell of freshly washed clothing as the eight full sets of socks tumbled into the drawer.

"You have way too many socks," Fruity deadpanned.

I ignored him as I picked out my favourite socks, a set of four sky blue socks with stripes a few shades darker than the primary colour. They came in two pairs, one pair for the forelegs and one pair for the hind legs. I only intended to wear the hind leg pair since it was my right hind leg that was exposed so first, I slipped on the left sock which felt pretty tight. Well, considering I was rather thin due to my illnesses back then, I bought small to medium sized socks so they'd fit me ok. As I held up the other sock I looked down at my robotic leg.

"This is going to look really baggy." I thought to myself and put the sock down and turned to the foreleg pair. Sure they were not designed to fit on the hind legs but it won't matter really as I was going to put my other hind leg sock over them.

I picked up one of the foreleg socks with my mouth and lifted my right hind leg, cringing at the mechanical grinding and whining it made as it moved into position as I stretched it out so I could slip the sock over my hoof. As I pulled the sock over my hoof, I became aware of a disturbing fact. I could not feel anything, not even as I dragged the fabric up the uneven groves of the metal limb, over the joints of the fetlock and knee, I couldn't feel it, not until the elastic of the sock was pulled over the intact flesh of my upper thigh where it gripped and held onto the skin. I could feel the fabric from the underside of my hoof since it must have pressure sensors, but the entirety of the metal limb was numb to the touch. I even punched my leg hard with my forehoof, which earned a "Have you lost your mind look." from Fruity but still I didn't feel the hit even though it made a loud metallic ding and nearly made me fall over. I began to breath hard as a sudden wave anxiety washed over me. It was then that I realised it was my flesh that could still feel the touch from other ponies and things. If I lost so much of my flesh then I would lose my ability to feel, the idea of being unable to feel filled me with a new sense of dread about my new body. I couldn't bare the idea of being unable to feel another pony's touch. At that thought I looked back up at Fruity, I don't think I could ever bear the thought never feeling his touch again.

"Are you ok?" Fruity asked, catching my sorrowful look.

I blinked with wide eyed surprise and coughed. "Um, yes, it's nothing, really,"

"Crystal..." He sighed disapprovingly.

I dropped my head in shame as I was going to hide it from him when we did agree to be truthful, but I didn't think it was something he needed to know. "I'm sorry, it's, it's just that when I put the first sock over my endoskeleton leg, I just didn't feel a thing and it just scared me that without my skin I wouldn't be able to feel at all." I explained sadly.

Fruity's cross expression lifted to understanding. "I see, well for now don't let it bother you and while we are out and about we can look for some armour." He suggested.

I gave a weak nod as I went back to slipping the other foreleg sock on and then the hind leg sock on over the two foreleg socks. With the two socks covering the metal limb and adding some padding to fill out the gap left behind from the missing flesh, the hind leg sock looked a little more natural covering the limb and as I moved my leg I was glad to discover I could barely hear the motors whirring and grinding through the fabric.

"How do I look?" I asked as I used my zebra like tail to keep my duster's long tails away from my flanks so Fruity could see my sock covered hind legs.

"Looks pretty good, nopony will really notice unless they look really closely," He said with a nod.

"Good," I smiled and then headed over to my closet and opened my maw to take hold of the door knob but stopped as I remembered how I bit through my dresser drawer handle. With a sigh I turned around so my tail could grasp at the door knob and pulled the closet open. I stepped inside and began to nose through some cardboard boxes that had miraculously survived the test of time until I found a box that had a set of four simple black hoof shoes. I pulled the two shoes out that were meant for my hind hooves and slipped them on. I didn't want to damage the underside of my socks if I could help it.

"Ok, I think we’re all set now." I said now fully dressed and packed.

Fruity nodded. "Ok, let's g.... are you ok?" He asked as I could finally no longer take the growing itchiness.

"Oh for Luna's sweet flank this is annoying me to hell and back," I cried with annoyance as I plopped my butt down and began to scratch at my cheek with my left hind hoof. I moaned in relief as I scratched, I felt ridiculous scratching like this but I couldn't stand it any longer, I just had to scratch this blasted itch. With my hoof rubbing over my cheek I could feel my cheek was rough with newly grown fur.

Fruity however found my annoyance amusing. He snorted and bit his lip trying to hold back his laughter, but it didn't last long as his dam finally burst and fell onto his back, kicking his legs in the hair as he laughed hysterically.

XXXXX

A couple of hours earlier.

I-02 IS had asked the Rangers at the farm if they had seen his target to which they told him they had and pointed him towards the south gate to Hayside. Nexus attempted to ask the mares standing guard if they had seen his target but they all gave him a suspicious look and refused to tell him if they had seen his target. However, they did let him through the gate. He spent hours wandering the streets of the run down town and slum while he observed the ponies living in it and asking any random pony if they had seen his target.

Nexus was at a loss as he searched for a pony who could tell him where his target had gone. It was like nopony inside had seen the Zebra he was looking for or even cared to help. He stood at a street corner connecting to Broadwalk Avenue close to the east gate as he looked through all the data he had collected so far. Most of it was useless and meaningless data to him for the moment, but anything that he had regarding his target still didn't tell him of a direction it was going beside into Hayside. He had combed most of Hayside with no side of the bionic Zebra.

"Hey, armoured freak!" A pony shouted in outrage.

Nexus turned his head to his right to look towards the east gate of Hayside where an angry stallion was approaching a pony clad in armour and spikes.

"Well hello again my good sir, require my services again?" He asked causally.

"Oh no you swindler, I know your game," The stallion shouted as he squared up the passive looking armoured stallion as Nexus began to approach the scene. "Staging attacks on your customers, boy I was nearly fooled until I went back to loot the fuckers you shot, only to find they were uninjured,"

"That is a serious accusation you are accusing me of sir," The armoured stallion said in a threatening tone.

"Oh yes, we'll see what Miss Queenie has to say about this." The stallion said in a huff and turned about face and began to march back up the road.

Nexus watched as the armoured stallion's face contorted into a deep slightly worried frown. "Need to silence him fast." He whispered to himself.

Nexus didn't recognise the armoured stallion so he decided to ask him if he had seen his target before he left as it was clear he was going to move.

"Excuse me, you wouldn't happen to have seen a grey striped Zebra around Hayside recently have you?" He asked making himself sound hopeful.

"Yea, that bitch and her coltfriend went through that gate into Chadderton Residential, now if you'll excuse me I have business to attend to," The armoured stallion said sounding annoyed and in a hurry for some reason.

"Thank you." Nexus said simply and emotionlessly as he turned and began for the gate.

As he entered the residential district, his sensors picked up the power signature of I-01's powercells. The disguised machine walked the streets until he stood in the middle of the street, slowly turning his head. He had been following the signature until it faded and became too weak to track, leaving him in the middle of a road trying to find the energy signature again.

"I finally find it and just as I'm closing in I lose the signal," He said out loud to himself with a hint of a growl to his voice as he felt something in the back of his head that stirred up from losing the signal shortly after finding it. "Is this feeling what ponies call, frustration?" He asked himself while he scanned the houses slowly.

While the machine stood in the open scanning for the energy signature a stallion dressed in Brahmin leather armour rounded a corner and saw the distracted Ranger.

"Oh shit!" He gasped as he quickly took cover behind the nearest wall and slowly peaked his head out to spy on the Ranger that was now looking in the opposite direction. "Hmm, yeah, good armour, helmet and awesome kick ass weapon, I'm having it." He grinned as he pulled a serrated knife out from his shoulder holster and crouched down and began to slowly and stealthily sneak up on the Ranger.

Nexus turned around, unaware of the stallion sneaking up on him as he put his back to him now. Suddenly there is an impact to the back of his neck followed by a metallic snap and a surprised gasp and thud. The machine turned his head to his left to see a stallion sprawled on the floor with a broken knife handle in his maw with shards of broken metal littering the tarmac between them.

"Ahh, fuck, what the hell?" The stallion moaned as he dropped the broken blade.

Nexus tilted his head, a motion that caused a couple of shards to drop down into the empty space in his armour. Feeling the shards fall inside him Nexus was able to deduce the stallion had attacked him and meant to kill him with the knife attack to his neck and so before the stallion could pick himself back up he stepped forward and pushed down, pinning him under his hoof.

"Hey, get the fuck off me asshole," The leather wearing stallion roared.

"You attack me, unprovoked and you demand for me to let you up?" Nexus asked as he lowered his head to be inches from the stallion as he spoke. "You intended to kill me, but you can't kill what doesn't live." He said which caused the struggling stallion to stop struggling and stare at him in confusion.

"You're not a ghoul are you?" He asked with a hint of fear.

Ghoul. That was a term that Nexus decided he would need to learn about later as he couldn't get any information from the Production Facility referring to ghouls beside fictional text. "No." He said simply and used his nano-fibre tail to lift his helmet off to show the stallion his mechanical skull like head and deep set glowing red eyes.

"OH BY THE GODDESSES SOMEPONY HELP ME!" The stallion screamed in terror at seeing the machine for what it truly was, but his screams for help were soon silenced as the machine pushed down with its inequine strength to squash his chest flat with a wet crunch.

"Unprovoked attacks cannot go unpunished, now, back to the task at hoof." He said emotionlessly as he began to walk deeper into the residential district.

Ranger Nexus searched the general area for another hour, looking around homes and different streets until finally he detected I-01's energy signature and it was getting stronger. He remembered what his commander had told him regarding I-01's energy cells degrading quickly and needing regular recharging and that he may lose its signature if it's power level dropped too low. Unfortunately, as I-02 IS began to track the signal, he discovered it was moving.

XXXXX

Our trip back to Ironshod Firearms was pretty much uneventful as we walked through the streets back towards the south gate. We passed the old warehouse I once worked at, which was an old cotton mill back in the day. It was a listed building, so it couldn't be knocked down, and was maintained and used as a warehouse. However, since the bombs had destroyed all sense of law and order as well as driven most ponies away from the cities, the building had been left to rot. The warehouse, by now, had collapsed in on itself as it was only made of brick and mortar, and was nothing more than a pile of broken bricks. To my surprise and astonishment the giant chimney stack still stood.

As we approached the south gate, one of the mares we met yesterday ran up to us once she saw us, which made me nervous.

"Hey, a Desert Ranger was looking for you," She said to me, which made me feel even more nervous.

"Really?" I asked in surprise and tried to keep my nervousness down.

"Yeah, I'd watch your back if I was you, he was giving us a bad vibe," The mare said with a shudder.

Fruity and I looked at each other. "Why would a Desert Ranger be looking for me?" I asked the pegasus stallion.

"Beats me, we practically just got here," He replied as we turned back to the mare. "Thanks for the heads up, but why stick your head out for us?" He asked with a little suspicion in his voice.

"We of the Queens keep the violence in Hayside down to a minimum and make sure no unwanted visitors get into the town. Miss Queenie doesn't like it when things turn into a riot in the streets,"

"So you're part of some gang?" Fruity asked. It was then that I noticed a gold badge pinned to the mare's jacket that was in the shape of a crown. Looking at the other two by the gate, I could see they too had a crown badge pinned on them as well.

"You can say that, but we at least try to keep the peace," She answered and then turned around. "Oh, by the way, nice socks." She said with a smile as she rejoined her fellow guards by the gate.

I let out a sigh of relief as she took her post with the other mares by the gate and let my nerves calm down. "Phew, for a moment there I thought she was onto me since she came right up to us," I whispered as we continued on our way towards the firearms building.

"Yeah but now we know somepony is onto us, the question is who and why?" Fruity said as he narrowed his eyes again in thought while we walked along the broken pavement.

I nodded in agreement. "Yeah, neither of us have done anything to attract the attention of the authorities here, and we haven't been here long enough,"

"So who could be looking for us?"

Suddenly, my eyes went wide with realisation. I didn't know for sure, but if it was who I thought that got a Desert Ranger looking for us, then I haven't seen the last of them. "I don't know for sure but I think those Zebra haters from the train may have gotten that Ranger to track us down. I wouldn't put it past them to tell a tall tale, and considering this region’s issues with the Illustrious Moon Tribe, I think a Desert Ranger would be quick to jump to conclusions,"

Fruity opened his mouth to say something. I quickly assumed he was going to mention the two we met yesterday and how helpful they were, but they were ready to kill us when they first saw me so I quickly cut him off.

"Remember how those two Rangers reacted when they first saw me, they were ready to pop me if I didn't take my hat off and they even said they thought I was from that tribe at first,"

"Yeah, you're right," He sighed as his ears drooped. "Well, let's not get worked up over this or owt like that. If you want to get behind that wall to get to the hospital, then we better just focus on the task at hoof."

I nodded with determination at the reminder as we made it to the trading booth to Ironshod Firearms. Thankfully, my electronic brain had already identified the weapons in the racks so I didn't get a headache from the an unexpected influx of information being forced into my organic brain again.

"Greetings potential customers, I am ready to process our transactions," The Ponytron inside the booth said in a tinny voice while its bulb like head flashed with each word.

I looked to Fruity. "Um, do you know how to interact with this thing?" Ponytrons were becoming common place in the last year or so before I was emitted to hospital, but my illnesses and my untimely 'death' kept me from experiencing them.

"Eeyup," He said as he unslung the standard plasma rifle from his back and pushed it through the hole in the glass window of the booth. "How much for this my old mucker?"

The machine's bulb like head flashed several times as it scanned over the rifle that Fruity had repaired to near tip top condition from the parts he scavenged from the MASA HQ before it made a beeping sound.

"Eight hundred and fifty two caps," The machine stated simply.

"Wow, you were nearly spot on,"

Fruity gave a smug grin. "Ok, we would like to sell this rifle and buy some or your wares," He said to the machine to which a flash of blue erupted from the bulb and a grid appeared in front of us, which made me shriek and jump back as I wasn't expecting it. Plus I'd never seen anything like it before.

"What's the matter with you, never seen a holographic interface before?" Fruity asked, looking behind himself to me.

"Pre-war mare here," I mumbled.

"Right..." He sighed and then chuckled.

I blushed in embarrassment as I looked around. There were ponies going about doing their own thing and minding their own business and not even paying attention to us, so I sighed with relief that nopony saw me make a foal out of myself.

I stepped up to the booth and looked at the grid that appeared on the holographic display. The display showed multiple categories: Weapons, Apparel, Aid, Misc and Ammo.

"Err, how do I see what's available?" I asked my friend.

"To interface with holographic controls, simply touch the area of the hologram you wish to interact," The Ponytron buzzed instead.

"What he said," Fruity sighed. "I was gonna tell her that," He added in a whisper to himself.

"Um, ok," I said as tentatively lifted a hoof and prodded the Ammo Tab. I let out a soft cry of surprise as the holographic screen flashed and the Ammo Tab expanded to fill the screen and showed a list of all the available ammunition types that this branch had in stock and boy, did it have a lot.

"Holy testicle Tuesday!" Fruity exclaimed at the large list of ammunition. "There’s enough ammunition to stock an army here!"

I guess I shouldn't have been surprised at the list, considering that the place not only sold firearms; it made them too. Looking over the list I was seeing: .223 calibre, .308 calibre, .357 Magnum, .44 Magnum, .45-70 Gov't, 50 calibre, 20 Gauge, 12 Gauge, 5.56mm, 5mm, 9mm, 10mm, 25mm Grenades, 40mm Grenades, Flamer Fuel and Missiles. It wasn't just the standard ammo either, as not only were there standard ammo, there were also Hollow Point, Armour Piercing, Incendiary and Explosive rounds for certain types of ammunition. So many ammunition types and I could feel that familiar buzz in the back of my head as my electronic brain gave an example to what weapon each ammunition type was compatible with. Last thing I really wanted to know was what gun can use what right now.

"How many bullets should I buy?" I asked my companion.

"Hmm let's have a look," Fruity said as he leaned over to look at the list. It was then that I noticed there was a value column next to the quantity, and for the bullets I require for Lucky 13 it would be three caps a round. "Hmm, three caps a bullet, and there are hundred and fifty bullets available... buy them all," Fruity said dismissively.

"What, no!" I shrieked. "This is your money because it was your rifle that gave us that eight hundred. If I buy all those I'll be using up more than half the money," I argued.

"It don't matter," Fruity shrugged with his wings before he looked around to be sure nopony was listening or in earshot. "When we go and kill this foal fiddling wanker and give his trinket to that dude Motor Runner, he'll be giving us five thousand smackers, so go right ahead and get all YOU need,"

Well I couldn't argue with his logic there, if we do get the pendant from this guy and if that huge stallion kept to his word and pays us the amount he said, I could only hope, then we would be much better off.

I tapped the .357 Magnum button and the screen flashed with a small window, asking me how many I wanted. I simply held my hoof in the air over the plus button until it maxed out the number of available bullets and then accepted them. While we were shopping, I decided to buy two healing potions, now that Fruity knew what I was, I didn't need to really use any anymore, but he certainly would if we get into trouble and since I still had a 10mm Pistol somewhere in my magic duster pocket, I decided to use the rest of the available caps from the traded in plasma rifle on some ten mill ammunition. Something in the back of my head was telling me it would be a good idea to have a backup weapon.

"Ok, that's everything." I said to the Ponytron. It beeped and two small arms popped out from the sides of its neck and they grabbed the rifle, pulling it in through the hole in the glass window. Once the rifle was tucked away in the booth, the machine began to pull up box after box of ammunition from under the counter. I tilted my head in surprise and confusion as the yellow .357 Magnum cardboard ammo box was decorated with a picture of a buffalo that looked like Chief Thunderhooves and the brand of the bullets was actually "Chief Bullets". In total, the bulb headed robot stacked six boxes of .357 Magnum rounds on the counter, two bottles of healing potions and a further three boxes of 10mm ammunition.

"Thank you for shopping with Ironshod Firearms, please come again," It said while it pushed the bought items through the same hole. I used my nano-fibre tail to scoop up the ammo and dump them into my duster pockets, not like my medical box would have enough room for all nine boxes, and then passed Fruity the two small bottles of healing potions. "You'll need them more than I will," I said simply.

All set and packed, we made our way east to being looking for our bounty.

XXXXX

I-02 IS sighed as he stood at a street corner. After twenty minutes of following the energy signature he lost the signal again as his target had got out of range of his scanners. The confrontation with the thug earlier had slowed him down.

"This will be problematic, I cannot track I-01's signature for more than a few hundred feet," Nexus said to himself.

Suddenly, while the machine contemplated which way to go next, I-01's signature was detected again heading east. The machine raised its head and turned to look in the direction it sensed its target heading.

"Where are you going?" He asked himself just as he lost the signal again. "I will find you." He added as he started to walk in the direction he last detected I-01's signature.

XXXXX

"So, how are we going to find this guy?" Fruity asked as he glided in the air a few feet above me.

"Surprisingly enough, my Pipbuck is leading us right to him or rather his hideout," I replied in surprise as I walked on three legs while I looked at my Pipbuck.

"How's that work?" Fruity asked, looking down at me while he glided.

"I don't know, I may have sold stuff for Stable-Tec but I never sold these things. But under the Job Tab I have a job listed as "Bounty Hunter" and its description is. "Confront Tango Jack at his hideout in the eastern hills outside of New Pegasus and collect the bounty on his head." and it's giving me bullet points with what we need to do. First we need to get to his hideout, then we need to take care of him, get this pendant as proof of the kill and then claim the bounty from Motor Runner," I said as I closed the tab and resumed walking on all fours. I was now following the direction marker in my EFS that was pointing me in the direction of the hills we were heading towards.

"You seem rather calm about killing a pony for a pre-war mare," Fruity remarked.

I sighed. "I've experienced the wasteland for over a week with you and seen what horrors it can hold, plus you've told me what it's really like out here. Like you've said, if I'm to survive out here I've got to look past my pre-war morals in some cases and this certainly qualifies. Besides, if we don't stop him, who will?"

"Good point."

The sun was beating down with its brilliant light, the air hot and dry in the afternoon as we climbed a hill a few miles outside of New Pegasus. The desert didn't look anything like the wasteland back over in eastern Equestria, which looked dead. This looked almost like it did back when before the bombs fell, alive. The sand was still yellow and orange, there were small trees and bushes that were still green, the rocks and cliffs of the hills and mountains around us were brown or rust coloured and most importantly the sky was still clear. There were a few scattered white fluffy clouds here and there, but unlike back east, the sky remained open.

"This is beautiful," Fruity remarked as he landed next to me.

I smiled. "The Marejave certainly has its charm," I said gently giving him a nudge. "C'mon, Tango's hideout should be just around that ridge if my map marker is right." I added while glancing down at my Pipbuck.

Wanting to be done with this quickly, we broke into a quick trot and made our way to a cliff and followed it around until we came to a makeshift hut that had been cobbled together by bits of wood and corrugated sheets of metal. We ground to a halt when the door opened, and the very pony we were after walked out with a saddlebag that looked ready to burst. Looked like somepony was about to make an escape.

"Tango Jack!" I shouted with a hint of venom as I called his name.

The Earth Pony jumped and looked up and then noticed us. "What, wait, it's you two from the street, what are you doing here and how did you find me?" He demanded, quickly recovering from his shock and quickly growing angry.

"Motor Runner wishes for your termination," I said while moving my right foreleg so he could see my revolver and... Did I really just say "Termination"? Holy Celestia that sounded very machine like.

"What?" He cried out in outrage. "He should be the one you should be killing, he's a back stabbing son of a mule and he's going to be killing us all in a few years if he finishes what he's building," Tango screamed.

"That dude, killing all of us, with what?" Fruity asked with an unbelieving tone.

"That fucker is building a giant robot with enough guns and armour so that he can use it to take over the world," He yelled.

"A giant robot, really?" I asked with a raised eyebrow. "That sounds like an average Saturday morning cartoon villain to me,"

"What the hay have you been smoking dude?"

"Don't believe me fine, but mark my words, it’s coming, now get out my way,"

"No, we have a bounty to collect," I said while taking a deep breath to regain my composure.

"Yeah, come and get it," He challenged.

I opened my mouth to go for my revolver when in a blink of an eye he craned his neck around to his saddlebag, grabbed a pistol from inside it and had it pointing right at me. Before I could do anything or even respond to the flashing exclamation mark warning of an impending threat, he fired and I felt tremendous pain explode in my left eye again.

I jumped back while screaming in agony with a forehoof to my eye, feeling what had once been the freshly regrown eye oozing out of the eye socket from being turned to mush from the bullet impact. "Argh son oh a... ahh my eye, argh, again, twice in one day," I screamed in agony.

"Sh-sh-she she-s not, not dead, h-how's that pos-possible?" Tango stuttered. "That, that should have been a, a f-fatal shot..."

Fruity rushed over to me. "Shit are you ok?"

I removed my hoof from my eye and Fruity immediately took a step back with his wings flaring and he wore a creeped out expression. "Your robotic eye is showing..." Fruity said and trailed off in a slightly scared voice.

"Holy mother of Celestia she's a fucking robot!" Tango cried out in alarm.

"I'm going to tear you apart you foal fiddling bastard," I growled as my anger surged forward while I focused on him, sending him my first death glare.

"The hell you will!" He shouted and took another shot, this one lazily aimed at Fruity. I quickly got in the way of the shot to protect my friend and felt the bullet bite into my shoulder which felt like a bee sting more than anything else, but when we looked back up to find Tango, he was gone.

"That coward!"

"Where is he?" Fruity asked, shaking his head to recover from the shock of me losing my eye again as well as nearly being shot.

I looked down at my EFS and found a red marker heading south. "He's heading south," We quickly turned south and crested the hill in front of us and we could see the coward making a run for it. He was heading towards a mountain directly ahead of us.

"C'mon, we can't let him get away," Fruity urged as we then gave chase.

While we ran I pulled Lucky 13 from its holster and held it in my mouth and pulled the trigger every so often, hoping to score lucky and pop this guy in the butt. Fruity took the air again as he cradled his prototype plasma rifle, Q-Modulator, with his hooves. Being a flier, he was much faster and could catch up to the fleeing stallion. As he got closer, he aimed his rifle, but as he pulled the trigger, the rifle sputtered and sparked but failed to fire, which caused the purple pegasus to curse loudly in annoyance. He was forced to retreat to a safe distance as his malfunctioning rifle and cursing allowed Tango to take a few pot shots at him.

"What happened?" I mumbled around the mouth grip of my revolver.

"I don't know, must have over cooked it the other day," Fruity replied as he replaced the MMC and began checking over the other knobs and dials the weapon had for adjustments. "I should have done a maintenance check on this thing," He muttered to himself.

I groaned with annoyance, six shots and all six missed. Running and gunning was not a good idea so I put Lucky 13 back in its holster. "Get back here and face justice," I cried out with a snort.

"BITE ME!" Tango shouted back as he disappeared around a rock as he made it to the mountain.

We came to an abrupt halt when we rounded the same rock and Tango Jack had miraculously disappeared.

"Where the hay did he go?" Fruity asked as he hovered in the air looking around while doing a complete three hundred and sixty degree turn. "I can't see him anywhere,"

I was surprised too, how could he just disappear like that? I looked back down at my EFS and sighed with relief as I could still see his red hostile marker. "He's still here," I called up at my friend and began to turn until his red marker was directly in front of me and that put me facing the rocky face of the mountain we were running towards.

"He's there," I said while pointing a hoof at the mountain.

"Clever git," Fruity groaned from above. "I can see a cave from here, he must be trying to lose us in there,"

"Well, not today." I said as I began for the cave Fruity pointed out.

I had to climb the mountain a few feet up to reach the cave, but once I made it, Fruity joined me and we were struck with an oddity. A wooden gate lay open to mark the entrance to the dark cave in front of us. We couldn't dwell on the odd gate for long as we had a criminal to catch and pushed forward. The cave was a stark contrast to the outside as where it was bright, hot and dry outside, it was cold, dark and damp in here.

"Feels like being back in Manehattan," Fruity mused as we began to follow the twisting cave to wherever Tango thought he could lose us.

"Yeah it was cold there," I agreed as we rounded a corner.

My threat warning suddenly flashed and a hungry growl emitted from the shadows behind us. Turning around we found a giant gecko plodding out from its hiding spot, probably disturbed from its slumber by the fleeing pervert.

"Oh not again,"

The creature roared and charged. "Shit," Fruity whined as he readied his rifle again.

I bend back down to retrieve Lucky 13 as the monster raised its forearms ready to pounce.

"Fire," Fruity commanded and pulled the trigger of his rifle, firing off a bolt of super heated green plasma. I followed suit, aiming down the sight of my revolver and firing a round aimed for the creature's chest. As the plasma bolt was an easy object to see in the dark cave, the monster easily avoided the slower moving projectile but ended up taking the bullet to the chest with a sickening splat, but it didn't seem to slow it down. Instead, the creature let out a hungry roar as it leapt with amazing grace and tackled Fruity to the ground and, to my horror, sunk its jagged teeth into his shoulder where his wing connected to his body.

"NO, GET OFF OF HIM!" I screamed, my vision taking on a threatening red as a reticule highlighted the monster's forehead.

"Argh!" Fruity cried out in agony as the creature started to jerk its head back and forth. "What are you waiting for, shoot it!" He cried out, pain lacing each word as he tried to push his free forehoof under its neck to keep the monster back.

I was scared, more scared than I'd ever felt in my entire life. Yes even more scared than when I thought of what death would bring. I could shoot and kill the gecko but then there was also a chance I could miss and hit Fruity or worse I could accidently kill him instead of save him. The anger that had risen when the monster had attacked him had vanished and was now a cold fear which now had me shaking, I was shaking so much Lucky 13 was rattling in my maw.

"I can't, I might hit you," I cried out around the mouth grip.

"Do it!" He urged with a painful cry.

I clenched my jaw hard on the enamel mouth grip on the revolver and closed my left eye... or at least did the mechanical action to simulate closing my left eye which I guess was the aperture closing up fully and pulled the trigger. In my red tinted vision I watched as a bullet hole exploded in the flesh that the reticule had focused on but to my shock and disbelief it didn't kill the monster. The gecko stopped and seemed to be stunned from the impact to its head, and Fruity used that to his advantage. While the mutated lizard was stunned, the injured pegasus jammed his free hoof into its orange eye. The gecko cried out in pain from the hoof to the eye and jumped back, letting Fruity back up.

"Cunting bastard," He groaned in pain as he stood up, blood dripping from the nasty tears in his shoulder and wing. He grit his teeth in anger and pain as he advanced on the gecko that was holding its head. "You hungry, huh?" He asked, scooping up the Q-Modulator he dropped when he was pounced upon, reared up onto his hind legs as he got close enough to the monster. "Eat this," He shouted and shoved the crackling discharge nozzle into the gecko's mouth and fired a bolt directly into its throat. I had to look away as the result reminded me of the day I met him because the gecko had turned into a pile of goo and bones.

Fruity groaned in pain as he dropped his rifle and quickly took off his duster and under shirt to prevent them from getting any further soaked in his blood as it steadily leaked from the lacerations in his shoulder. I quickly ran up to him and popped the jam levers to let my carry case drop to the floor and wasted no time in opening it.

"We need to get your shoulder treated," I urged as I used my tail to grab a cloth that was already inside the old medical box and pushed it against his most severe wound to stem to blood flow, which made him hiss in pain. "Drink two healing potions," I added while I plucked out a bottle of water. Holy Celestia, this had been in there since just before I was last emitted to hospital, according to the date on the cap. Thankfully the water wasn't irradiated or contaminated by anything else from what my EFS can identify. While Fruity popped the corks and drank two vials of healing potion from the carry case, I used the water to pour over the wound to clean away the blood. I sighed with relief as the healing potion took effect and closed the lacerations and, thankfully, with the pressure, I had applied to the worse wound that too closed pretty well.

"How do you feel?" I asked as I stepped back and discarded the bloody rag.

He rolled his shoulder and hissed with pain. "Hmm, still hurts but not burning with pain anymore, is there any Med-X in there?" He asked.

A quick glace into the carry case revealed just one syringe of the pain relieving drug tucked away inside. "Yeah just one," I replied.

"May I have it please?"

"Um, sure,"

Fruity sighed thankfully as he gently plucked the needle out of the box and stuck it into his foreleg and then pushed down the plunger to inject the serum. Within seconds, his pained expression softened and he smiled with relief and was back to his old self again. "Ahhh that's better," He sighed happily and threw his clothing back on while I got the travel case back on against my side. Once we were all set again, we continued on deeper into the cave after our target.

The cave was rather long and twisting, like an S bend. We began to wonder if he might have found an exit somewhere else until we began to descend. We trotted deeper into the earth at a cautious gait as the cave started to grow darker, but as we got deeper, something else started to play on my senses.

"Can you hear that?" I asked as my ears started to twist this way and that as a humming sound started to drift up from somewhere up ahead.

Fruity's ears perked up as he listened. He shook his head at first but as we got even deeper his eyes widened and then he looked at me. "Yeah, I can hear something now, like some sort of humming,"

I nodded in agreement feeling very cautious as we walked down the slope. Before long, the slope levelled out and opened up into a wide chamber, but the back wall wasn't that of a cave. It was that of a solid concrete wall with a single cog like hole in the middle that was gaping wide open.

"This isn't a cave, it's a fucking Stable..." Fruity gasped in surprised. Well, that explained the humming.

"You're right," I nodded as a message appeared in my EFS to tell me that we had discovered a new location. "We just found Stable 16."

"Well at least we know where he is now,"

"Yeah, and I lost him…" I sighed.

"What?"

"I just glanced at my compass in my EFS, it's how I've tracked him so far as he has shown up as a hostile target so he's red on my compass. You’re white as you're not," I sighed dejectedly. "I can see several red markers ahead of us in there, I don't know which one is him now,"

Fruity put a hoof to his forehead and groaned. "Oh ponyfeathers, we're gonna go in and get him aren't we?"

I nodded glumly.

"Ugh, this is going to take for-bloody-ever," He moaned in annoyance as we walked through the threshold of the thick door and stepped into the musky Stable. Immediately, I felt like something was wrong. I mean for starters, the Stable door was wide open. What else told me something wasn't right was the state of the entrance lobby; it was a complete mess. Metal shelving was strewn about everywhere, boxes and crates were open and had their contents spilled out all over the floor, consoles had been pulled away from the walls and wires had been pulled out and cut, chairs littered the floors and some of them looked to have been used to have bashed somepony around the head with as some had dried blood on them and the last thing I could see that told me something wasn't right was the walls. The walls were dirty and grimy like they hadn't been cleaned in years, where there were breaks in the concrete for service hatches and support beams, the concrete was thickly stained with rust.

"I have a real bad feeling about this," I muttered to myself as I slowly walked up the steps to get into the lobby proper.

Suddenly, alarms started to beep in the lobby with an orange warning light flashing behind me. I quickly spun around in time to see the huge steel door roll into place, and then, with an ear piercing screech, the locking arm descended from the ceiling and connected with the door. With another ear piercing and teeth shattering screech of metal on metal grinding, it shoved the thirteen ton door into position to seal off the Stable. I began to panic, the Stable had just locked us in. I frantically looked around for my pegasus friend but found him with his forehoof on the door control lever; he was just removing his hoof from pushing the lever into the close position.

"Fruity, did you just close the door?" I asked, totally shocked.

"Yeah," He said, using the same hoof to then rub inside of one of his ears. "Damn that was loud,"

"Why did you close the door?" I cried out.

"So that tosser doesn't escape," He replied simply. "You heard how loud that was and how long it took to close the door. If he gets around us and doubles back to the door, and maybe knows how to open it since the door was still wide open, which tells me he might not, then the warning sirens will alert us so we can come straight back here. And even if the door opens before we get here, it'll have slowed him down so we won't be far behind him." Fruity reasoned.

My mouth was agape, I never thought about that and he was right. "Um, good thinking,"

"I may have been a pisshead before I became a Dashite but that doesn't mean I'm a numpty," He said as he walked up beside me.

We stared at the closed door in front of us that would lead us into the Stable.

XXXXX

A pair of black striped zebras stood on a ridge that overlooked a makeshift shack and had bore witness to a shooting between a stallion and two other ponies, one grey striped zebra mare and a purple pegasus stallion. The pair had watched with great interest as the mare took a bullet to the eye and lived, but it was revealed that she wasn't exactly entirely organic to begin with.

"This mare maybe what our Elder has been looking for Zool," The zebra mare quietly said to her companion.

"Indeed sister, this artificial life form might be just was he's been looking for,” Agreed the stallion.

Nodding to each other, the two zebras stealthily snuck away when the zebra mare and pegaus gave chase to the stallion towards the far off mountain.

XXXXX

Ranger Nexus was feeling that feeling of frustration again as he had lost sight and the signal of I-01 again as he arrived at the mountain he had watched the zebra and pegasus follow an Earth Pony to.

"Where have they gone now?" He asked himself as he began to turn around in a three hundred and sixty degree sweep of his surroundings to get a good look around himself. "I should be able to at least still see them from here, even if I-01 was out of my sensory range."

As the disguised robot turned to the face the mountain, his audio receptors picked up the heavy grating metallic screeching of metal on metal grinding. Typically, the type of sound heard when a heavy metal object was forced to scrape against another metallic object and in his data base, which was also linked with the computer system back at the Production Facility, there was only one thing that could make such a noise. The closing of a Stable door. He quickly locked onto the source of the sound before it dissipated and scaled the rocks until he found the open wooden gate to mark the entry way to the hidden Stable.

"This could work to my advantage," He thought to himself as he followed the path into the cave, taking note of the pile of glowing green goo and gecko bones along the way. "This could be problematic, I have no defence against plasma energy and this armour suit can only offer so much protection. Plasma energy will cause serious damage to my endoskeleton without this armour," He thought to himself as he soon arrived at the sealed Stable door.

"Incoming transmission..."

I-02 IS froze in front of Stable 16's door as the commanding voice of his commander filled his head, albeit fuzzy from the interference from being underground.

"Where are you I-02 IS, your signal transmitter has stopped transmitting?" He barked angrily.

"I assure you sir my signal transmitter is active," He said while he looked around the chamber for the door control. He found it sitting next to the concrete wall beside the steel door. "I have tracked I-01 to Stable 16 which is deep under a mountain," He added to explain his loss of a signal.

"Stable 16... Its mind might be lost by the time it comes out, but that is of no importance as all that matters is its body remaining intact and alive. What I want to accomplish for Equestria requires I-01's body," The commander again reminded I-02 of the importance of I-01 being retrieved intact.

"It will be done sir." Nexus affirmed and the connection ended. He raised his hoof and placed it on the lever and then stopped. "Wait, I have a better idea..."


Crystal Eclair Socked by Geekladd

I-02 IS by Vector Brony

PreWar Crystal Eclair by Geekladd

Chapter 7: Lunatic Asylum

View Online

Fallout Equestria
Influx

Chapter 7: Lunatic Asylum


The door opened to a wide and long corridor with a security station off to the right which had its door wide open. My original bad feeling about this stable got even worse upon seeing the rubbish and debris filling the corridor and the broken security door laying on the floor like it had been broken down. A shattered viewing window enforced the bad feeling. It looked like there was a riot in here.

We both stared wide eyed in shock at the scene before us with the same question on our lips. "What the hay happened here?"

"Tango, where are you?" I shouted and immediately felt dumb for doing it.

"You featherbrain," Fruity sighed as he stepped into the security station and began to root around while I couldn't stop gawking at the totally ruined corridor, feeling stupid.

"Err, Crystal, what do you make of this?" Fruity asked, sounding confused.

"Huh," I shook my head to snap myself out of my stupor and stepped into the room. "What is it?"

Fruity simply pushed a stained piece of paper that looked like it was torn from a book or something towards me. I tilted my head as I read the short note that looked to have been mouth written.

"Dear Diary,

Today the air tasted different for some reason... I don't know why but the air tasted a little... pink I guess? I know that sounds odd and all but I can't explain it, the air tasted a little pink. My supper was way too hot last night, maybe I burnt my tongue and that's why the air tastes funny.

I always wanted to be a beatnik, but my pants were too tight."

I blinked in confusion and looked up at Fruity. "That was so weird," I commented. "And that last bit was random,"

"Yeah, I didn't get it either,"

We left the weird note and the trashed security room and walked along the corridor until we reached the end. The corridor ended with a doorway at the very end and to the right of the door, there was a stairwell going down. I pressed the door control for the door and it slid up into the ceiling to reveal an empty store room.

"I guess we take the stairs," I said, turning and heading down the stairs cautiously.

"This place feels wrong," Fruity whimpered, with a ruffle of his wings in agitation.

"I know what you mean Fruity, this place is giving me the creeps." I mentally added as we descended the stairs.

The bottom of the stairs was sealed off by a door, so I pressed the door control and opened it. With a soft metallic whine, the door rose up to give us access to the "Atrium" according to what the sign on the door said. I couldn't tell where the threats were in this place, there were so many red bars they all seemed to blend together which made trying to find a threat in this place unreliable. As the door opened and I stepped out into the Atrium ahead of Fruity, something felt off. I could smell or taste something funny in the air; the Stable smelt bad, like the wasteland in general but something else was mixed in the already foul smell. However, I couldn't for the life of me tell what it was.

"Hey Fruity, can you smell anything funny?" I asked, looking back to the purple stallion as he reached the bottom of the stairs.

He took a big, snotty breath in with his nose, something that reminded me of what my Dad used to do before he would spit out a big glob of snot, eww, and then shook his head but not in the manner to say no. "*cough* Yeah, I can certainly smell something different but can't tell wha... Crystal LOOK OUT!" He suddenly shouted in alarm.

"New friends," A new crazed voice chirped from behind me before suddenly, a heavy impact collided with the back of my head before I even had time to react to the flashing warning exclamation mark that had appeared. I cried out in pain; I could feel blood gently oozing down the back of my neck as my vision began to swim. My legs felt like they had turned to jelly as I turned around to see a unicorn mare dressed in a stable suit and looking totally bonkers with wide twitching eyes that reminded me of one of those old mad Twilight Sparkle posters. She was levitating a sledge hammer. I let out a groan as I collapsed and my vision went black.

XXXXX

"Oh shit no," Fruity cried out in shock as he quickly flapped his wings to balance himself on his hind legs and swung his plasma rifle out ready to engage the mad mare who had just knocked out his bio-mechanical companion. With the crazy look in her eye, he was sure she intended to knock him out too and probably do mad depraved things with them both. "Eat plasma you mad cow," He shouted in anger and pulled the hoof trigger, only for his weapon to sputter and go dark. "Oh for the love of..." He groaned in annoyance as his weapon malfunctioned yet again.

"Oh a birdie, your wings look pretty, can I have them?" She asked as she dropped her hammer and plucked a rather rusty looking breadknife off her utility belt.

"Oh heck," The stallion paled in fear as he continued to fiddle with his malfunctioning plasma rifle. "When we get through this, if we get through this, I am so doing a maintenance check on you," He screamed, "CRYSTAL, WAKE UP!"

As if answering his plea, the downed zebra's remaining organic eye shot open and a threatening red light filled her pupil. She shuddered for a moment before she pulled herself back up to her hooves and slowly turned her head as if to survey her surroundings before her mechanical and organic eyes, both glowing a deep red, focused on the twitching unicorn mare who was now staring at the zebra with a spreading smile.

"Yay she wants play some more!"

"Self defence protocol initiated," Crystal spoke in a totally emotionless and monotone voice that sounded entirely mechanical, lacking the character that Fruity had grown to know since he met her, which started a bad feeling to churn in his stomach as he watched his friend turn her attention entirely on her attacker. "Threat identified... terminating..."

The unicorn mare didn't seem to grasp that she was in danger as she hovered her rusty blade up to strike. Crystal didn't seem to even care about the blade as she began to approach the mad mare. Giggling insanely, the unicorn swung her serrated bread knife for Crystal's neck. The zebra saw the attack coming and raised her right foreleg to block the blow despite the blade cutting into her flesh by an inch.

"Silly filly, you gone and cut yourself," The mare chastised with a giggle.

With a sudden and quick flick of her foreleg, the bio-mechanical zebra sent the bread knife flying to the other side of the Atrium with a clang. The knife wrenched from the insane mare's grasp gave the zebra the perfect opening. Rearing up onto her hind legs, she twisted her torso to the right and then swung her right foreleg out as hard as she could and smashed it into the side of the unicorn's head.

"Holy fucking Luna’s sweet ass flank!" Fruity exclaimed in horror as he watched the mare's head cave in with the force of the impact to the side of her head.

The mare didn't even scream as she fell to the floor with a heavy meaty thud; she was dead as soon as the machine's leg fractured her skull and pushed pieces of bone into her brain. Fruity felt bile rise in his throat as he saw the side of the mare's head had been crushed by his friend's blow. The zebra turned to face him and when he saw those glowing red eyes he felt a cold shiver run down his spine and a lead weight of fear settle in his stomach as she began to approach him. Her gaze drifted down to his weapon before it then moved back up to his eyes. It felt like her mechanical eyes were staring into his soul and he was unable to move or look away.

"Whoa, peace," He said holding his hooves up while letting the Q-Modulator hang from its strap which unfortunately swung down and caught him in his crown jewels, making the Pegasus’s wings seize up and he fell to the floor, clutching at his tackle while letting out a high pitched cry of pain.

The machine tilted her head for a moment before turning away as if deciding that he wasn't a threat to her. At that moment however, three doors in the Atrium opened and three more stable ponies emerged, attracted by the commotion.

"Multiple threats detected..."

"Wait, Crystal," Fruity said in a painful groan as he pulled himself back up to his hooves despite the pain between his hind legs. Unfortunately, the zebra was already heading towards the closest stable dweller. Fruity shook his head and pumped his wings so he could regain his balance again on his hind legs and took aim with his rifle. He prayed the weapon would work, he had to at least offer some sort of cover for his seemingly possessed friend.

"Look at that ass," A crazed stallion said around the handle of a knife as he began to approach from behind the zebra mare.

"Demons... demons..." Another said with a crazy eye twitch.

The bio-mechanical zebra wasn't even bothering to take notice of the threats coming in from behind while she focused on an earth pony mare branding a metal baseball bat.

"Time to play ball," The mare mumbled around the handle and swung her bat. Crystal blocked it, but before she could counter the strike, the detection sensor in her electronic brain that the coding for pain alerted the machine to being stabbed in the rear. She turned her head to see that the other two targets were dangerously close and that one of them had stabbed her in her right butt cheek. While distracted, the insane Earth Pony mare took another swing and hit the zebra mare above her missing eye, ripping away a part of her flesh that revealed a metal plate that made up the top half of her eye socket along with her machine number. I-01.

I-01 turned its attention back to the mare with the bat. The mare turned her head to take another swing, but this time I-01 was ready and she simply just punched the mare in the side of the head, similar to the first mare and caved her head in causing instant death.

Fruity gawked, again, a single blow caused instant death. He had to wonder just how much strength his bio-mechanical friend had in those legs of hers. He remembered how she kicked the head of a ghoul clean off its shoulders and how she punched through the head of a sentry drone to protect him so he had an idea. He cursed as his weapon refused to work by fiddling with the dials and knobs on the top of the weapon.

"Celestia have mercy, I'm going to tear you a new one when this over," He growled at his weapon. He looked up in time to watch the mare topple over with a hole in the side of her head and Crystal's right hoof covered in blood. He could see how close the two stallions were to her rear and he knew what was coming when she pushed up with her hind legs. "Not watching," He muttered and turned around but he cringed when he heard two sickening crunches which were followed by two heavy thuds.

Turning back around there were now four dead stable dwellers and a bloodier Crystal walking towards him. He cringed when he saw that Crystal's left eyebrow had been torn off again like it had earlier that morning. He quickly holstered his rifle as the machine walked up to him and then past him.

"Hey, Crystal, where you going?" He asked as she began up the stairs but ignored him. "Crystal?"

He followed after her while calling her name but she continuously ignored him. Upon reaching the top of the stairs she turned right and walked inside the small store room.

"Crystal what's going... wait, you're not Crystal..." He looked at her and noticed the letter and number engraved into her metal eyebrow. "I-01, what's going on?"

"Self defence protocol in effect, protection of consciousness paramount, objective of self defence protocol is to neutralise any and all threats to consciousness if consciousness is incapable of defending itself and to retreat to a safe location for recovery." The machine stated.

Fruity now understood the sudden change in his friend, but it now scared him. Any time she is knocked unconscious while still in danger, then the machine will take over! At least it was just temporary, only until she wakes up. He saw the machine reach for the door control, and not wanting to be locked out of the store room, he quickly joined her inside just as she hit the button to close the door. When the door slid shut, she then engaged the manual lock override which meant if any other insane ponies tried to find them they wouldn't be able to open the door.

"Area secure, self defence protocol disengaged." She said and with that, she collapsed to the floor like a sack of potatoes.

"Bugger me!" He cried as she fell to the floor with a bang. "Well good night then, ugh, might as well try to get you to work now you piece of shit." He grumbled as he sat on his hunches and pulled the Q-Modulator around to begin tinkering with it while he waited for his friend to wake up.

XXXXX

"Ugh, my head," I groaned as I lifted my head off the floor and brought a forehoof up to rub at my sore temple on the left side of my head.

"Crystal, is that you?" Fruity asked cautiously.

"Is it me, Fruity what are you talking about? Of course it's me!" I asked with a groan as my head pulsed with a headache.

"Oh thank Celestia, it is you," He sighed with relief.

"What do you mean?" I groaned.

"You got knocked out a few hours ago," He said as he clipped the discharge barrel back onto his Q-Modulator. "But shortly after you got ko'd, the machine seemed to take over,"

"Come again?" I said with alarm and stared at him.

"Um yeah, after you fell down and that crazy unicorn mare started to come for me you woke up again but it wasn't exactly you..." He trailed off as he shuddered and I could see the fear in his eyes, whatever happened scared him. "The pupil of your right eye was actually glowing red, which told me it wasn't really you, plus the first thing you said as you woke up was, "Self defence protocol initiated," Fruity said while mocking a robotic voice. My eyes widened in shock and a fear of my own set in as it seemed the machine inside me could just take over me. But thankfully, before I could dwell even more on that disturbing thought Fruity continued. "You then proceeded to attack that insane mare, you clobbered her in the side of the head so hard you caved her skull in," Fruity explained while looking sick at the metal image, it was enough to make me feel sick too as I looked down at my left foreleg, noticing the blood that was dried up on my Pipbuck. "Unfortunately, after you killed that mare, three more stable ponies, just as crackers as the mare appeared and you went on and killed them in a similar fashion even though one of them clobbered you in the head with a baseball bat, but thankfully you've healed up being in here though," Fruity finished with a sad sigh.

I realised after Fruity finished that my vision was no longer split between one side being red and the other in colour. I reached up with a hoof and felt for my eye, sighing with relief as my hoof grazed over my eye lid and eyebrow. I lay there for a few moments more waiting for my headache to clear before I stood up again and as I stood, I felt a tightness around my right hind leg and I couldn't help the smile that graced my lips. I looked back and held out my right hind leg and sighed happily to see that the sock covered limb looked fuller than before. "Finally it's starting to regenerate,"

"Yeah, since we were pretty much sealed in here and safe, your body healed itself rather quickly," Fruity said as he slung his rifle. "Crystal, is it worth going back out there, down in that Stable to find this guy? I know I said it's a lot of caps, but the risk, you've already had your eye shot out and been knocked out, and I've had my wing mauled on. But something about this place feels wrong. Is it worth it?" Fruity asked in concern.

I could understand his concern. He was right, it was very risky to continue our pursuit of this pony for the five thousand cap bounty, but then we would have to find another way to get the minimum three thousand cap credit we'd need to get into the city. I didn’t know how long that would take, and where else it would lead us but right here, right now, we had a target that would be able to give us the caps we need. I want to know what became of me and the knowledge that the machine could take over me like this gave me more reason to want to pursue Tango instead of waiting longer.

"I understand your concern Fruity, but I feel the longer I leave this, the less of a pony I'm going to feel. Like you just said, the machine took over me while I was unconscious. If it can do that, I'd rather get to know what the hell happened to me now rather than later, so I'm prepared to take the risk."

"Are you really sure about this?" He asked.

"Fruity, what would you do if you were me?" I asked hopeful.

He was silent for a little while as he thought over his reply. I could see it on his face how he was debating with himself. The pegasus let out a defeated sigh and hung his head. "If I was in your ponyshoes I'd want to know sooner rather than later too. Fine, let's get this over with,"

"Don't worry, we'll get through this together," I said and went to give him a reassuring nuzzle on the cheek, but he pulled back and turned his head away. That hurt inside to see him recoil from my approach. Did I really scare him that much when the machine took over, or was that also from this morning's disturbing reveal about me? Either way it was confirmation our relationship was going be rough from here on out. With my ears plastered to the sides of my head, I released the door's manual lock and opened the door. "Let's get this over with." I sighed dejectedly.

We entered the Atrium again and I saw the horrors that the machine part of me subjected Fruity too. Four dead bodies and each of them had their heads pulverized. "I did this, I mean the machine did this?" I gasped in shock while suddenly getting the urge to start wiping my hooves on anything I could find. Fruity nodded with a frown.

"I don't want the machine to take over again, like ever," I whimpered and cringed at the sight. Suddenly, the threat detector appeared again in my vision, forcing me to look around for an incoming threat. However, as I looked around the Atrium, I didn't see anything that could be a danger. "I think that hammer to the head broke me," I grumbled to myself.

"Why, what's wrong?"

"My threat detector is warning me of a danger but I can't see anything that'll be a danger to us,"

"You have a threat detector?" Fruity asked with a raised eyebrow.

"I guess so, an exclamation mark flashes into my vision if there's a danger nearby, but in some instances I don't react fast enough,"

"Huh uh," He nodded then he smacked his lips. "The air in here still tastes funny,"

I took a deep breath. "Ugh yeah, something is wrong in here,"

"Ok, where do we start looking for this cocksucker?" Fruity asked as he licked his lips. "Weird, I can taste strawberries," He muttered quietly.

That was a good question and I lifted my left foreleg and concentrated. The local map screen appeared and showed the Atrium and the doors leading out, as well as the rooms that were also part of the Atrium. Three doors were marked on the map screen, Living Quarters, Science Labs and Maintenance. The closest door was to our left, leading us into the Living Quarters of the stable.

"I suppose we could check out the Living Quarters first," I suggested.

"Alright," Fruity agreed as we made our way across the ruined Atrium to the door.

With a nod from Fruity, who readied his rifle and aimed it at the door. I hit the door control and opened the door. The door slid up to reveal a corridor full of rubbish. Following Fruity's example, I plucked Lucky 13 from its holster and held it at the ready as we began to cautiously make our way through the corridor. I was happy to discover that the living quarters themselves each had a window to let us see into each apartment which meant we didn't have to open the doors to manually check each room. Neither of us wanted to stay down here longer than we had to, especially since this place had crazy ponies in it and something felt really wrong in here.

Each room we checked through the windows looked wrecked, but after ten apartments, we came to one that looked as clean and as well maintained as if it was still pristine, despite the obvious near two century degradation. Curious, we entered the apartment. I checked my EFS for hostile targets but surprisingly found no hostile tags in a connecting room, which I believed to be the bedroom. I pressed the door control and the door slid open to reveal a bedroom in the same pristine condition as the living/kitchen main room of the apartment and an Earth Pony mare sat on the bed rocking back and forth.

"Clean, clean, oh I love to clean," She muttered, but then looked at us then down at the floor, she gasped and then grabbed a mop that was sitting beside her bed. "Oh no, dirty," She cried and started to mop the floor at our hooves.

"It's clean..." Fruity whined.

"No it's dirty, I want to clean that bit you're on, clean," She mumbled crazily and continued to push at our hooves with the mop. In the end, she effectively curled us with the mop out the door.

"I've never been run out of a room by some crazy OCD mare before," Fruity said, stunned at what just happened.

"I don't think she can get that room any cleaner even if she tried." I added in disbelief at the surrealness.

Shaking our heads to snap ourselves out of our stupors, we continued on. For a Stable, this place seemed rather empty, but considering the door was wide open when we got here, I wasn’t surprised. But there were still enough hostile ponies in here to keep my EFS full.

We continued on until we came to a door which seemed to open automatically as we got close enough to it. Upon opening, we noticed two stallions who stood in the corridor, talking to each other. One of the stable dwellers was wearing a chef's hat.

"Bollocks..." Fruity sighed. Fruity was right to moan as the Chef was covered in blood and he had knives of various sizes all over his stable barding.

The two stallions turned and looked at us, their eyes wide and crazy like the mare’s. "This can't be good," I muttered around the mouth grip of my revolver.

"Ohhh, look Sizzle Sticks, cows," The stallion next to the Chef pointed to us and yelled excitedly.

"You numbskull, they ain't cows," The Chef said. Fruity and I let out a sigh of relief, but that was short lived because of what he said next. "They’re the biggest, fattest turkeys I've ever did see,"

"Let's eat'em," The other said.

"Hmm good idea," The Chef replied and pulled a huge cleaver from his sleeve.

"You have got to be kidding..." Fruity sighed and raised his Q-Modulator.

"Nope, they look pretty hungry," I mumbled while closing an eye to aim down the sight of Lucky 13, each of us taking a stallion each as they approached. With a nod from Fruity, we both pulled the triggers to our guns and the corridor echoed with the bang and discharge of lead and plasma. My .357 Magnum round had cleanly punched into the head of the chef's companion and he crumpled to the floor, but unfortunately still had his eyes open and the crazed look still frozen on his face. The Chef took the plasma bolt through the side of the neck, melting away half of his flesh, but it had the same effect as if slitting somepony's throat as the severed artery began spewing out blood, so much so the Chef choked and began to drown on his own blood. He fell to the floor gasping for air.

"Shit." Fruity sighed as he lowered his rifle to aim at his head and fired again. I let out a cry of shock, surprise and horror as the point blank shot didn't liquefy him like I expected. It instead caused his head to explode, showering us both in gore. "Holy balls and ass cock!" Fruity yelled in surprise as he didn't expect the explosion of gore. I began slapping and wiping myself with my tail and forelegs while shivering in disgust after the event while chanting "Gross" again over and over.

"Why did you do that?" I whined as I frantically began to look for any sign of a bathroom as we continued along the corridor.

"Ugh, *spit* Got some in my mouth..." Fruity said while spitting a glob of something out that I didn't bother to see because I didn't want to know what had got in his mouth from that episode of horribleness. "He was suffering, I missed his head the first time and I wanted to put him out of his misery quickly instead of letting him drown on his own blood. I've seen Raiders slit pony’s throats and watch them die and it's a horrible way to go so, I didn't want to subject him to that even if he was a total nutter," Fruity explained as he wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

"I see, well let's try to avoid any more unpleasantness," I sighed.

We rounded a corner and I smiled as a hanging sign pointed us to a male or female restroom on either side of the corridor. "Oh finally," I said and brought my gaze down to see which side the mare's room was on. I blinked and my vision took on a pinkish hue, maybe because of the dull lighting in this ruined stable and I saw a mare standing in the middle of the corridor that froze me solid. The mare was pink, sparkling and had a light yellow mane and tail, she turned her head and smiled sweetly at me, her sparkling blue eyes shimmering in the dull light before she turned to the door on the right side and walked through and into the mare's restroom. "Mother..." I breathed out in shock before shaking my head.

"Hey, are you ok, you look like you just seen a ghost?" Fruity asked, noting my shocked expression.

I blinked several times before returning to my senses. "Um, yeah, I thought I saw something," I said before shaking my head again. Now I can taste strawberries too. "Did you see a mare just now?" I asked while pointing ahead of us. Fruity just shook his head. Oh great, it was just me that saw her, ugh the stress of this place must be getting to me. "I need to use the little filly’s room," I moaned in agitation and headed for the mare's restroom and slowly peeked into the old dirty toilets for any sign of the mare I saw, but the toilets were deserted. "I must be seeing things," I muttered as I entered and headed for the nearest sink and turned on the tap. As I peered in the mirror it was then I realised the pinkish haze had also gone. What is going on in here? The bad feeling churning in my gut was only getting worse as I splashed water on my face to better clean off the gore from Fruity's botched kill.

"No not Mutfruit!" Fruity yelled suddenly.

I quickly ran out into the corridor to find Fruity up against a wall panting heavily as if he had a big scare.

"Are you alright?" I asked in a slight panic, water dripping off my face since I didn't get a chance to dry off.

"Storeroom, full to the ceiling, Mutfruit," He panted out heavily while pointing to the door in front of him marked as "Janitor Closet #07" with a shaky hoof. I raised an eyebrow and went to open the door.

"NO!" He screamed and shielded his head with his forelegs.

I pressed the door control and as the door slid up, I saw nothing but mops, buckets and out of date cleaning products.

"There's nothing here," I said and stepped back to let him see.

As he peeked out from between his forelegs he gasped as he saw the near empty room. "But, I swear, I was about to get steamrolled by a mountain of Mutfruit before I closed the door again," He cried and rushed to the door and stuck his head inside the room to look for the phantom fruit. He shook his head and sat back while rubbing his eyes. "Ugh, that Med-X must have been some strong stuff, I'm seeing shit,"

"Maybe not, I thought I saw my mum just a minute ago,"

He blinked. "Ok, let's find this guy and get the buck outta here, something is so wrong down here...." He stopped and smacked his lips again. "Why strawberries, what is with this place?"

"You can taste it too?"

He nodded, ok, that didn’t sound good.

"How are we going to find this guy in here if you can't find him with your EFS?" Fruity asked.

I held a forehoof to my chin in thought. Where could we go to find this pony easily without having to transverse the entire stable looking for him? Wait, that's it, the Overmare's Office. The main terminal bank in her office had access to all security camera feeds and would let us see into all areas of the stable where we would be able to find where he was hiding. Thank Celestia I paid attention to the Stable-Tec representative during the tour when I was taken around Stable 34.

"The Overmare's Office," I said and looked down at my Pipbuck to check the map to find it. Thankfully, the Overmare's Office is in the Living Quarters section of the Stable where we currently were and wasn't too far away, but it was on the upper level of the Living Quarters and it was the largest apartment with a window into the Atrium. "We'll need to follow this corridor until we get to a crossroad, the crossroad leads to a stairwell going up that'll take us to the upper level where we can get to the Overmare's Office." I explained while also taking note of the two other doors the crossroad would lead to, the stairs to the left when we get to it and the doors the crossroad lead to, while straight on and to the right would be to the Recreational Rooms and Science Labs.

"Alright then, let's get a move on," Fruity said with urgency as we begun down the corridor and made our way up the stairs into the second level of the Living Quarters.

The second level was just as much of a mess as the lower level. It was enough to make you wonder what had gone on down here to bring this stable to ruin.

"We need to follow the corridor all the way around to get to the Overmare's Office," I said as we passed an intersection that lead down another corridor but according to the map it would join up with the one we are currently walking along as to make a full circuit. Fruity nodded as he hovered behind me. The corridors were thankfully wide enough to allow him to at least hover so he could keep his weapon at the ready.

The apartments we passed looked larger than the ones on the lower level and I assumed it was for the richer or more important ponies of the stable to have the bigger and more luxurious rooms. However, as we came to the corner that would put us on the path right to the Overmare's Office,` a red marker on my EFS caused me to stop.

"Hostile," I warned just as a creamy yellow unicorn mare with a light purple tail and a mane done up into pigtails, dressed in a pink and white checked gingham dress and matching bonnet along with black army boots on her hind legs stepped out into the corridor. She turned and faced us and to our surprise, she looked calm and collected, not wide eyed crazy like the other insane stable dwellers we'd ran into, but the outfit was a giveaway that something was wrong with her.

"The hell...?" Fruity quietly muttered as the mare raised a foreleg which had a hoof puppet of a black and pink dragon on it. Ok this mare is definitely mad.

"They've been naughty foals haven't they Mrs Nessy?" The unicorn mare asked the puppet calmly. The mare turned the puppet to look at her with its wobbly eyes shaking about as it was turned to face her.

"Yes," The mare said, but in a higher and squeakier voice.

"What happens to naughty foals who've been naughty Mrs Nessy?" The mare asked in her normal voice as if she was having a proper conversation with the puppet.

Fruity lifted a hoof to his ear and made a circular motion with his hoof in the universal sign to say if somepony was loopy. Unfortunately, this mare was giving me a very, very bad vibe, not to mention my flashing threat warning was flashing brighter. "I think we should go the other way," I whispered.

"What she gonna do, shoot lasers out of her eyes? She's armed with a puppet."

"Auntie Glimmer fries them alive with her hex vision," The mare said again in the puppet's voice. Oh no.

Fruity raised his rifle and charged a shot as his eyes widened in shock.

"You just had to say it didn't you?" I groaned.

The mare gave a sadistic grin. "That's right Mrs Nessy," She replied in her calm tone and turned to face us again. Her horn glowed a blood red and so did her eyes. I quickly raised my revolver while also taking a step back.

"Like I knew she had hex vision," He retorted and fired a burning ball of plasma at the mad dress wearing mare. Her eyes flashed red and lightning shot forth and struck the plasma ball, causing it to explode before it could even reach her.

"Ah shit," Fruity cursed as he aimed for a second short only to drop to the floor to avoid another hex vision blast from the mare. "Holy shit, what sort of magic gives a mare hex vision!?" Fruity cried as we turned around and ran back the way we came. This mare had the advantage here, her hex vision was faster and more accurate than our weapons and in these tight corridors we couldn’t engage her head on so the best plan was to retreat.

"The other way," I said while nodding to the left hoof turn before the stairs going down. There was a loud buzzing blast from behind us as the mare fired another hex vision blast. I cried out in pain as I felt the magic lightning like shot burn through my duster tails and graze my flank, leaving a little burn. Thankfully the hex blast was just a graze. "Why can't we meet anypony nice?" I cried with a hiss of pain as we rounded the corner just in time to miss another blast.

"Why can't we meet anypony who can shoot straight?" Fruity added as we ran and jumped over the rubbish, not slowing down and stopping until we got to the intersection behind where the mare was. We stopped before the intersection and I slowly poked my head out from around the corner to see if the mare was down where we first saw her, but she was nowhere to be seen.

"She's gone," I sighed with relief.

"Good, let's hop to it before she comes back," Fruity urged. I nodded and we turned to the right and began to quickly trot towards the Overmare's Office.

The corridor was long and had several open doors that would have divided the corridor up into sections, probably to minimise fire hazards. The last door in the corridor was closed. "That door up ahead, once we get through that, the office will be at the end," I said.

"What door?" Fruity asked as he squinted.

Can't he see it? I turned back in the direction of the door and it was then I realised my vision had gone pink again. What's with the pink? Suddenly the door opened and... I must be going mad. Three ponies that looked like mother ran through and towards us but as soon as they got within an inch of us, they all disappeared like they weren't even there.

"What the hell?" I cried and slammed on the brakes. I skidded to a stop on the dirty floor while looking around frantically but my vision had returned to normal.

"What's wrong?" Fruity asked concerned.

"I saw the door open and then saw three ponies that looked like my mother run towards us but they just disappeared," I cried, panting from the shock. Am I finally cracking under the stress?

"I've said it once and I'll say it again, something is not right down here," Fruity sighed in annoyance.

He was right, something definitely isn't right down here. I shook my head hard to clear it as we came up to the Overmare's Office door. Fruity raised his rifle and nodded to me. I then pressed the door control with my tail, and the door slid up it revealed a trashed office. It looked like somepony had a huge fight in here and the skeleton slumped in the office chair behind the horseshoe shaped desk with a tattered Overmare uniform was enough of a giveaway as to who the victim was, not to mention the hole in the skull's forehead. A gun lay on the floor next to the desk with several spent shell casings around it to show that it had been used before the Overmare was murdered. Suddenly a bolt of plasma shot passed my head and hit the office chair, causing it to glow green before it turned to goo.

"Celestia on a bike, what was that for?" I cried out in shock and rubbed at my left ear as it felt really hot after the energy ball passed it. Fruity looked panicked, like he just saw somepony he was really scared of before he blinked rapidly for a moment then looked confused and looked around.

"I... I swear I just saw an Enclave Trooper standing in here with his plasma rifles ready to fire. I-I've had to avoid the Enclave ever since they cast me out as they usually shoot Dashites on sight," He sighed. I'm starting to think we are both seeing things down here now. I've seen my mother now twice that Fruity hasn't seen and he had seen things that scare him twice that I hadn't seen and why did the taste of strawberries get stronger after each time it happened?

"Are you ok?" I asked with concern.

"Y-yeah, I'll be ok, I'll just guard the door..." The pegasus sighed and sat by the door looking pretty disturbed. "I'm going to be put off strawberries for life after this," He added in a quiet mutter. I might be put off by them too after this as well as they'd be a reminder of this hell. Plus, this stable had been so full of nightmare fuel so far, I'd probably be having nightmares for weeks too.

I nodded, softly to him while I walked over to the terminal bank at the back of the ruined office. I'd never used this type of system before, how was I going to use it? Just as I thought that, I felt the familiar buzz in the back of my head as my brain was filled with knowledge regarding the terminal. I rolled my eyes as the terminal bank was simply called the "Overmare's Terminal". I sorta expected some fancy long Stable-Tec or Robronco name. Shrugging it off I sat before the terminal and began to press keys, first I pressed the power button to make sure the terminal bank was online which thankfully it was as the four screens lit up with a soft flash. Using the knowledge I had been provided, by my electronic brain, I hit the appropriate keys and then selected the security camera system, which divided all four screens into dozens of small little windows, each showing a different portion of the stable.

I slowly scanned each picture the cameras were giving, Living Quarters, Recreational Rooms, Science Labs and then into Maintenance. I was on the last terminal screen and started to think the paedophile might have slipped out of the stable without us knowing until I found him. He was in a spare materials storage room not far from the Science Lab's entrance into the Maintenance wing of the stable. He looked horrified, like he'd seen his worst fears come to light, plus he looked really beat up. I suppose he had run into a few of the insane inhabitants along the way.

"I found him," I called to Fruity who was by my side in an instant after I called out to him that I had found him.

"Now we can go pop this wanker."

I nodded. "Yeah, just give me a quick second to see if there is anything else on this thing," I said while doing a quick search for any information. Unfortunately a lot of the stored data on this terminal was corrupted or had been deleted leaving little behind but I did find one piece of information. A message that the Overmare sent out to the security ponies of the stable just two weeks after the door sealed.

"To all Stable Security staff: If any of our residents notice any unusual odour or faint taste in the air, please assure them that everything is fine. There was a slight irregularity in our filtration system but nothing to cause alarm; the systems have already been corrected and are at one hundred percent functionality again. If you notice anypony acting out in a strange manner, please report the disturbance immediately so medical assistance can be sent."

"Why does this note seem suspicious to me?" Fruity asked as he leaned closer to the screen so he could scrutinize the note more closely.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"If it's telling ponies about a fault in the air filtration system and to reassure them that the problem was corrected. Why just send this to just the security ponies?" He asked, raising a very good valid point.

"Huh, you're right,"

"Wait a minute..." He suddenly squawked in surprise as if he realised something. "A strange taste in the air, ponies acting strange," He then turned to me. "You don't think this has something to do with why this stable is so messed up?"

I gasped. "You know, you could be onto something. We've both been tasting strawberries and the ponies we've met down here have all been bonkers,"

"We better get a move on," Fruity urged as we turned and headed for the door. As we turned, I noticed a picture frame hanging on the wall that was crooked and the painting itself had long since deteriorated to nothing and behind it was a safe that was open.

"One second," I said, curious to see what was inside. I nudged the door open the rest of the way and sighed with disappointment as it was empty save for a torn up pile of decayed papers. I reached in with a hoof and pulled one of the torn slips out to see what was on the piece of paper. The decayed piece of paper was almost unreadable, but the Stable-Tec logo was still clearly visible on it. Curious, I reached in and plucked another random slip of torn paper, this was just a small section and seemed to have a title in bold print. "Stable-Tec Directive:..." The paper was torn before I could read what the directive was.

"What have you found?" Fruity asked from beside me suddenly, making me jump and cry out in surprise.

"Gah, don't do that!" I shouted at him for scaring me. My scare and jump caused enough of a draft to cause the slips of paper too scatter and tumble out of the safe and fall to the floor.

"Hehe, sorry, um, what did you find?" He asked with an embarrassed blush from scaring me.

I groaned. "Ugh, nothing, but whatever that paper was, it must have been this Stable's instructions as the pieces I looked at had the Stable-Tec logo and something about a directive but cut off before it told me. It looks like somepony tore it up for some reason though," I said and turned around and began to walk with him towards the door. "Anyway, we better find Tango, deal with him and leave,"

"I second that."

The walk back to the stairs was uneventful, thankfully, and we didn't run into that crazy mare again either, which was a plus. We descended the stairs back down to the first level on the Living Quarters, facing the door to the Science Labs. As we stepped into the intersection my threat warning flashed brighter and a red marker appeared directly in front of us.

"Hang on, hostile target in front of us," I warned, stopping Fruity before he could walk ahead.

Suddenly, the door to the Science Labs began to glow red hot in the middle.

"Oh this can't be good..." Fruity sighed.

The glow intensified as the heat grew, soon the metal of the door began to warp before it started to melt and run. A clear hole was being burnt through the door by an intense glow of magical energy. We had to shield our eyes from the sheer brightness of the glow as the hole grew bigger in the door.

"What the bloody hell is going on?" Fruity cried out in annoyance.

Just as we thought we were going to go blind from the brightness of the light despite our attempt to shield our eyes the light stopped and the sound of magic also ceased, leaving nothing but the sizzle of super heated metal as it cooled.

I lowered my foreleg while Fruity shifted his wing from his face. Our eyes widened in shock at what stood in the hole melted into the door to the Science Labs. It was the puppet holding, dress wearing mare. She was staring at us holding the puppet to her chest with it looking at us while shaking it. Fruity and I were stunned into silence at finding the mare standing before us inside the melted door as we couldn't comprehend how she did it.

"Mrs Nessy is very cross," The mare began in her calm voice while also sounding deeply offended and still staring at us. "You shouldn't have run away from her, what are we going to do with them Mrs Nessy?" She asked and then she raised the puppet up to face level with her and turned it to face her. She turned her head to look at the puppet and wiggled the puppet to simulate the puppet whispering to her and then she make a gasping expression, opening her mouth wide in shock at whatever the mad mare seemed to have heard from the puppet, before she fixed her gaze back on us and tilted the puppet ever so slightly so its googly eyes also looked at us. The motion of having the fake set of eyes as well as the mare now giving us a sinister smirk sent chills down my spine.

"We can't possibly do that," She said in mock shock before her voice turned dark and sadistic. "Who'd clear up the mess?" She asked, to which her horn glowed blood red again with magic but instead of her eyes glowing, the puppet's eyes began to glow instead as they charged up for a hex vision blast.

"Oh shit..."

"RUN!" I screamed and turned tail, practically shoving the pegasus up the corridor to the door to the Recreational Rooms.

Just as we rounded the corner, I heard the roar of the hex vision shoot pass us from behind. That mare was a whole new level of crazy and I really do not want to know what her craziness suggested to her through that puppet! I could feel my heart thundering in my chest, and if I had ribs I could make the comment that my heart was trying to break out my chest with how hard it was thumping inside.

We came to the closed door and hit the door control, quickly running through when the door had opened enough. The door automatically closed behind us, but Fruity turned back to the door.

"What are you doing?" I cried frantically as I skidded to a stop.

"Slowing her down," He replied as he reared up onto his forehooves and bucked the door control on the wall, destroying the control system to permanently seal the door. He then grabbed a lever sticking out of the door with his mouth and pulled it, with a heavy clunk a series of locking clamps clamped down around the edges of the door.

"Hopefully that’ll slow her down," The purple pegasus said as he rejoined me and we swiftly trotted down a flight of stairs to enter the recreational rooms of the stable.

"What did you do?" I asked.

"I engaged the manual locking system, heh, you showed me how to do that actually, well, I-01 did..."

"I zero... huh?" I asked with a raised eye brow while we began to walk up a corridor.

Fruity sighed. "It’s... your machine name, you engaged a manual lock on the storeroom door while the SDP was active,"

"Oh..."

An awkward silence developed between us after the subject of me being controlled by the machine came up. I sighed dejectedly, feeling down at being reminded that I'm less of a mare than I really am again. The silence continued between us, the pair of us unable to find a way to break the awkwardness that arose between us as we walked down the corridor. The corridor was lined with windows and doors, all leading and looking into different rooms for various activities. I turned my head to the right and looked through the grimy windows as I walked passed and I saw a mane saloon, a cinema, library and even a spa.

I blinked my eyes as I walked passed a door, and when I opened my eyes again, I noticed that everything had taken on the pinkish haze again. Oh no, not again. Fearful of what I could end up seeing, I decided to stop and stare at the wall, or in this case the window I had stopped at, but as I stared at the window, my eyes widened as the window swirled until I could see the Crystal Empire from the northern mountains. This was a view of the empire I could easily remember as it was a view I would often see from the train as it passed through the mountain pass when I travelled to the empire as a filly to visit my grandparents. I could clearly see the protective dome of magic that protected the empire. The dome made it look like there was this one spot of sun shine in the middle of the frozen tundra. Suddenly, the dome flickered before disappearing leaving the empire exposed and I suddenly realised what I was seeing. Confirmation to my realization came when three balefire missiles appeared in the sky heading for the empire. No no no! This hallucination was making me relive my nightmare from a different perspective. Shining Armour's shield formed and deflected the first missile just like in my nightmare. His shield shattered, and the second missile hit the palace. From my perspective on the mountain, it was horrifying, watching the dome of green fire grow before exploding outward, the shockwave obliterating everything in its path, leaving nothing but a smoking crater of green fire behind.

"NO!" I screamed in distress and promptly punched my right forehoof through the window, shattering the window and ending the hallucination.

"Holy bucking shit!" Fruity shrieked as he jumped back from me as I thrust my hoof through the window. I blinked several times, staring at the now shattered window and my foreleg. My foreleg was now covered in small cuts and the sleeve of my duster had been torn in several places along its length. I felt a hoof on my shoulder and Fruity started to shake me. "Crystal, are you ok, Crystal, hello?" I was completely oblivious to him as I stared at my injured foreleg, my breathing heavy as the memory of my nightmare replayed itself in my head as I stared at the slow trickle of blood oozing from the cuts while my leg throbbed in light pain.

Fruity groaned. "Ugh, don't tell me I'm gonna need to smack you upside the head with something to snap you out it,"

I heard a metal crack and then a grunt as if the pegasus was lifting something. I quickly turned around to face him holding my damaged foreleg up to stop the incoming blow I expected was coming. "I'm fine Fruity!" I shouted, just as he held the pipe he had in his mouth up high while standing on his hind legs.

"Oh shit," Fruity mumbled around the metal pipe and then he fell backwards onto his back and spat out the rusty piece of metal. "What the hell was that about, you just froze up all of a sudden?" He asked with a whine as he laid on his back.

I sighed. "I... I had another hallucination, this one made me relive a nightmare I had the other night," I sighed sadly.

"A... nightmare?" He asked with a raised eyebrow as he rolled himself back to his hooves.

I nodded. "I'll tell you about it later,"

"It must have been something really bad to make you freak out like that," He said sadly as we continued down the corridor. "So, where are we going?" He asked to change the subject.

I was grateful for that and lifted my pipbuck, forcing me to walk on three legs, which wasn't too difficult, oddly enough, and concentrated on bringing up the map. The screen flashed and the local area map appeared showing the corridor we are walking along and all the different rooms connecting to it for all the different recreational activities. At the very end of the corridor which was around a left hoof turn is the Stable's Apple Orchard, why it was in this section of the stable I didn't know, and on the other end of the orchard was a door to the Science Labs.

"There is a door to the Science Labs on the other side of the Apple Orchard around the bend here," I said while using my left foreleg to point to the upcoming left turn. The pegasus nodded as we trotted along the corridor. We turned the corner and abruptly stopped as around five stable dwellers were milling about in hallway.

"OH CELESTIA NO, NOT MORE ENCLAVE SOLDIERS!" Fruity shrieked in terror and backpedalled around the corner to hide from them.

I knew he must have come under the influence of a hallucination because, why else would he have screamed about the Enclave? But his scream alerted the lunatics, and I quickly grabbed my revolver with my maw and held it ready while spreading my legs to block the corridor.

I narrowed my eyes as I focused on the approaching crazies, each one branded a bladed weapon of sorts and all of them were looking at me with murderous intent. I had to take them out, there was no other way. Fruity was of no help while the hallucination had him paralysed in fear. It was up to me to protect him. I concentrated and targeting reticules appeared in my vision, which also took on a reddish hue. A reticule appeared around the heads of each of the approaching loons and then everything seemed to slow to a crawl as I took aim on my targets. A message appeared in my vision telling me that SATS had activated and I used the targeting spell to line up a head shot for each of the approaching ponies. Well, that's what I was going to do until I got to the fourth pony and SATS said I didn't have enough spell points to power the spell any further. Three out of five would do, taking out the other two manually wouldn't be too difficult. Accepting my lined up headshots with the spell from the pipbuck, I pulled the trigger in quick succession, turning my head ever so slightly when I pulled the trigger for the next target as time resumed normally. Lucky 13's bullets tore a hole into the heads of each of the targeted lunatics, instantly killing and putting them out of their crazed lives. With three down, it left only two, one of which charged at me seeing that I had left myself open after my SATS assisted shots.

I turned to aim for the charging stallion but he was too close. He drove his kitchen knife deep into my chest. I let out a scream of agony, dropping my gun in the process as I felt the blade dig deep and get lodged between the regeneration talisman and the chest cavity it sat in. With the stallion’s momentum carrying him forwards against me, he crashed into me, pushing me back a little on the dirty floor. The blade against the cavity wall acting as leverage and his weight pushing against it felt like his knife was going to pry my talisman from my chest. The insane survivor bounced back off of me and fell to the floor with a pained groan and thankfully so did his knife that clattered to the floor harmlessly but my talisman felt like it had been dislodged. I groaned in pain and lifted a forehoof to my chest and gave a soft thump. I let out a cry of pain as an audible click echoed in the hallway. “Regeneration Talisman Reconnected.”

When I looked back up I found the downed stallion had picked himself back up and the other pony had begun to flank me. My vision was still under the reddish hue as I looked between the two mad ponies as they circled me, reticules highlighting they heads again I focused on them. While my attention was on the stallion that had rammed me, the other stable dweller took his chance and dove at my rear. My threat detector flashed brighter at the incoming threat and I hopped to the side to avoid him, but unfortunately, his bladed weapon cut along my right hind leg, cutting my dirtied blue striped sock and damaging the semi-regenerated flesh beneath it.

“Argh, damn it, these are a Coco Pommel original!” I shrieked in outrage as my favourite set of socks got damaged. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised considering the situation. With the stallion now at my side, I quickly grabbed his tail with my nano-fibre tail and yanked him back hard; hard enough to pull him off his hooves and make him fall onto his barrel. To keep him down, I put my right hind hoof down on his back, applying enough pressure with my mechanical strength that he squirmed and moaned in pain.

The remaining stallion had retrieved his knife but also he had picked up my gun and was pointing it at me, giggling insanely as he held my own gun against me. “I win,” He giggled around the mouth grip and pulled the trigger. I closed my eyes and braced myself in fear of the inevitable. There was a loud bang as my gun fired. I thought that was it, game over, I failed and screamed with my anguish. However, death did not show himself to claim me, but a strong biting pain exploded in the middle of my forehead as something red hot smashed into my forehead. I cried out in pain as it felt like I just cracked my head on something solid, like when you accidently hit your head when bending over near something, that kind of unexpected pain. I stepped back, shaking my head and using my right forehoof to wipe at my head as I could feel something stuck in my fur and there was also a light trickle of blood from the impact. The pony I had stepped on scrabbled back up to his hooves and moved to a safe distance by the time I put my hoof down with a bullet in my hoof. It was compressed, like it had hit a solid object and it was then I realised it was me it had hit. My endoskeleton must have been strong enough to withstand a .357 magnum round. I sighed deeply with relief that I was going to be ok and that it would take more than that to kill me, but it also worried me. I suppose this worry was again with the question of, just how strong is my endoskeleton?

“She’s a demon,” The stallion who stabbed and shot me gasped, his eyes wide in terror. He dropped my gun and turned tail and ran away, disappearing into a room down the corridor. He was no longer a problem as his EFS tag had turned white to show he had become none hostile due to the terror plaguing him. I was then left with the stallion I had pinned earlier. Making sure I didn’t have a repeat of being shot by my own gun I quickly picked it up with my nano-fibre tail and after fumbling around with it for a moment with the hairs to hold it correctly I held the gun and pointed it the lone stallion.

“If you have any sense at all left in you, run,” I shouted at him. He unfortunately didn’t listen; he instead plucked another knife from his belt, mumbling something I couldn’t understand around the grip of his weapon. I sighed. “So be it, it’s not like I didn’t give you the chance,” He pushed off the floor and started to run at me and I fired the revolver, the shot went wide and missed the stallion by an inch. I side stepped to avoid his attack, but I misjudged his speed and he slashed down across the right side of my flank and part of my thigh, again cutting into my partly regenerated leg and socks. “Not again..” I moaned and jumped back to get some distance. I sighed dejectedly, my EFS’s weapon readouts alerting me to one round left in the cylinder. I had to make my last shot count or this would have to get bloody.

I held the gun again with my tail, pointing it at the stallion that had now turned around to face me again, his blade dripping with the blood from my flank. I grit my teeth in pain as my forehead and flank stung from the damage. He mumbled something again and charged. I waited, the reticule around his head was split up into four corners but were closing together the closer her got and when the corners joined to make a complete square I pulled the trigger with my steel like hairs in my tail and the customised revolver fired its last round. I cringed as the bullet was slightly off course as it punched into the stallion’s left eye. The shot was fatal and his body spasmed as it fell to the floor with a thud. “Oh Celestia,” I sighed in disgust from seeing his eye explode.

“Are they gone?” Fruity asked as he peeked out from around the corner as the commotion ended.

“Yeah, they’re gone,” I sighed sadly as I reloaded Lucky 13 and then holstered it.

“I’m sorry I…” He stopped as he looked around. “Oh piss and balls… this stupid stable and these visions,” He cried out angrily.

“It’s ok Fruity; I knew you’d fallen victim to another hallucination again,” I said giving my friend a reassuring smile. “It’s not your fault,”

“But still, I shouldn’t have ran like I was trying to hide from the tax collector,” He sighed. The purple stallion suddenly gasped in shock. “Holy high Luna on a tricycle are you ok?” He asked looking wide eyed at my forehead.

“Yeah I’m fine, head’s thicker than I thought,” I replied with a light smile, hoping to relieve the tension a little.

He gave a light smile as we continued on and we soon found ourselves at the Apple Orchard. It was a huge room, almost the size of a hoofball field with dozens of trees all laden with the bright red fruit. Judging by the piles of rotten apples littering the orchard floor, nopony has been maintaining this place for a while. I guess the automated systems had been keeping these trees alive, just the personal touches from the ponies had been neglected.

“Once we get through here we can get to the Science Labs,” I assured Fruity. “Unfortunately this will put us on the opposite side to where we wanted to be,”

“Well at least we will be there, I’m not going back that way to run into “little miss kill you with my eyes”,” Fruity groaned. “Besides, we might as well grab some fresh apples while we are here,” He said while licking his lips.

We entered the large internal orchard and we felt the heat of the sun on our backs again as if we were back outside. I couldn’t help but look up and smile at the familiar feeling. I noticed Fruity also look up with me as he must have been curious about the heat change too. Above us was what sat suspended above the trees like a miniature sun was the Stable’s “Solar Generator” and to make the whole experience of being outside all the more real, the ceiling of the orchard was lined with holographic tiles to simulate a day or night time sky. The colour of the holographic ceiling and the glow of the artificial sun told us it was late afternoon and we had been down here a while now.

“Why don’t you buck us a tree so we can stock up on some apples?” Fruity suggested.

“How about no,” I retorted while gesturing to all the brown mush littering the overgrown and unkempt grass around the trees. “I don’t want to pick up any good apples out of the rotten muck,”

“Ah, good point, I’ll go pick us some then,” He said and took to the air and began to hover around a nearby tree.

I smiled as I watched him hover freely in the wide open space of the orchard. I couldn’t help my mind wandering, to wonder what it must be like to be able to fly. In my day dream of flying I didn’t realise I put myself under his hovering flight path around the tree as he plucked apples. He’d pick one, keep it or then throw it if it was bad.

“Noting good about this one,” He sighed and dropped it as he passed right over me.

I snapped out of my day dream just as his shadow passed over me and as I looked up.

SPLAT!

An apple rotten to the core landed directly on my muzzle and exploded in a gooey mush all over my face. It got in my nose and in my mouth and dear sweet Luna the decayed fruit tasted revolting. In a totally unladylike manner, I spat and blew the rotten apple from mouth and nose before wiping my face furiously with my hooves to scrape the brown mush off my face and out my fur.

“What are you doing?” Fruity asked a minute or two later, hovering in front of me with his forelegs cradling a dozen delicious looking red apples.

“You dropped a rotten apple on me…” I whined while wiping what was left of the gunk from my face. I was thankful that none of that brown mush got in my mane or on my hat. I don’t think I’d be finding a working washing machine anything time soon.

Hearing that he accidently dropped a bad apple on me he frowned and then apologised. However, a smirk crept onto his face, but I had to give him credit for not bursting into laughter as I could see he wanted to laugh, but he refrained himself from doing so.

“I need to find a bathroom,” I whined.

“C’mon then,” He said while landing on his hind hooves and while balancing, opened the medical/carry case on my side and dumped about six apples inside it and then closed the box. He quickly pocketed the other apples he had and returned to all four hooves. “We have an equal share of the apples now, so let’s go,”

I nodded with a smile as we headed for the far end and the corridor leading away from the orchard. It took us a good couple of minutes of walking along the long wide apple farm room before we reached the end. I positively reeked by the time we stepped into the corridor.

“Oh wow, you smell terrific,” He snarked while holding a hoof to his nose. I could only just groan. My sense of smell was practically shot by the vile odours and I still had the nasty taste lingering in my mouth.

Looking left and right, the corridor turned out to be very short, ending in a couple of doors on either end. At the end, and to our left was the door to the Science Labs and to the right were a set of doors facing each other. The symbols on them made me squeal with delight. They were bathrooms. I ran up to the closed door marked for the mare’s room and pushed the door control, my smile at being able to wash this gunk off faded as the door didn’t budge. I tried again and the door refused to move.

“Huh, what gives?” I cried in annoyance and grabbed the door’s manual release with my mouth. I pulled, but the door still refused to move but the magic in my mouth softened the metal handle and I ended up biting through it and falling back onto my rump with a spearmint tasting metal bar in my mouth.

“I guess the manual locks are engaged,” Fruity suggested as he tried the male restroom with the same result. I whined pathetically while chewing on the metal bar. Why do I have such rotten luck?

“We better keep going,” I said, gulping down the minty metal.

“Eeyup,” Fruity agreed as we began for the Science Labs door.

“Mrs Nessy is very cross,” We heard drift across the air to our ears making us freeze in terror at the familiar calm voice. “Two naughty foals ran from her, have you seen them?”

“She must me asking that pony I spared,” I whispered to Fruity before looking across the orchard to try and see the nutcase on the other side.

“We better get the hell out of here, like now!” He urged.

“She’s a demon, she’s a demon, she’s a demon,” I heard the pony I spared cry in fear.

“Oh, telling lies, that is naughty isn’t it Mrs Nessy?” I faintly heard. There was a pause before I heard her voice again to which I assumed she did her puppet voice and that I failed to hear it. “That’s right Mrs Nessy,” That was then followed by a loud zap and the pony I spared screaming in agony as he was set aflame by the crazy mare’s hex vision.

I felt a surge of anger rise up inside me. I spared him, he wasn’t going to hurt anypony else, he had enough sense to know when to quit. I let him live and this mare; this psycho accuses him of lying and just torches him. I turned to face the orchard.

“Whoa hey, we haven’t got time for this,” Fruity urged.

Suddenly, an arching beam of red lightning came rushing at me from across the other side of the orchard. “Oh crap!” I cried and dived to the concrete floor of the corridor to avoid the hex vision. “She has a hell of a range!” I whined and quickly scrambled back away from the orchard and behind the safety of the wall and joined Fruity by the door to the Science Labs. “Open it, open it!” I urged quickly. Despite how much I would have wanted to have given that murdered Stable dweller justice, that hex vision was still incontestable in this stable. Even at a range I was at a disadvantage. If I was to run into this nut job again, killing her would have to be by taking her by surprise, otherwise it would be frying time and that was a dreadful thought.

Fruity opened the door to the Science Labs and we quickly entered our destination in the stable and closed the door quickly. I engaged the manual lock on the door to seal it and turned to my purple pegasus friend.

“Can you weld the door shut?” I asked while pointing to the plasma rifle slung under his uninjured wing. He gave a nod and reared up onto his hind legs, using his wings to balance himself as he took hold of his rifle and aimed at the door. He fired three plasma bolts at the door, striking around the middle on both sides on its locking clamps and also at the top, the superheated plasma causing the metal to warp and melt before fusing together as they re-solidified to permanently seal the door.

“Hopefully that’ll slow her down,” Fruity sighed.

I nodded hopefully as I looked around. We were in a hall that branched off around a corner behind us and in front of us was sealed off by a security gate cutting us off. From where we stood, we were on the opposite side of where Tango Jack was hiding and we’d have to get to the other side to find him. A quick examination of the gate revealed an electronic lock that required a card key to unlock or a remote access terminal link from a security station according to the small glowing green screen next to the gate’s card reader. With no other, choice we followed the only path open to us.

The corridor around the corner ended in a dead end and there was nothing but a single door set in the bare concrete wall gave us any further direction. Looking up for any other signs, we saw that the door was actually a security station. I guess it made sense to have a security station here, they wouldn’t want to have unauthorised ponies getting into the science labs through the recreational rooms. It also meant we’d find our way through the gate inside so we pushed open the door to a mess of an office.

“Whoa, it’s like a weather pony set off a tornado in here,” Fruity remarked as we surveyed the carnage of the wrecked security office.

The office was covered in papers and other miscellaneous junk. It certainly looked like somepony left in a hurry. I walked over to the desk against the back wall and pressed a key on the terminal. Thankfully, it turned on and was still logged in. I found the option to open the security gate and activated it and as I backed out to the main screen I noticed a note that caught my attention.

“Stable-Tec Killers!”

Curious of the note about the company I worked for before the end of the war, I accessed the note.

“I can’t fucking believe it. The Overmare, Stable-Tec, they’re responsible for all this! I knew something was fishy about the note she sent two weeks after the door closed. Shortly after we got that notice, residents began to complain about a strange taste of strawberries in the air and in all honestly so could we. As requested by the Overmare,, I and the security staff reassured the residents that everything was fine and that there was nothing to worry about but boy were we wrong. As the weeks and months passed residents began acting oddly, sometimes even violently. Every single one of them that medical treated to the best they could all said they were hallucinating and that they were getting worse every time they had one. I found it odd that I, the security personnel, medical and the Overmare were not suffering these hallucinations or any mental break downs so I began to investigate in this.

What I found was disturbing. This stable, despite its science labs lacked the equipment to perform chemical analyse so the medical pony’s couldn’t perform blood tests on the residents to see if there was anything in their blood. Unfortunately, as I investigated, things deteriorated further and the hallucinating ponies became violent, attacking the security and medical staff. In one night, what seemed like a large riot we lost almost a third of the medical staff and a quarter of the security team before we managed to lock up and seal the crazy ponies up. I don’t know what was going, on but we couldn’t handle the entire stable turning crazy like that so I decided to confront the Overmare about this as she seemed to be turning a blind eye to all of it.

The Overmare, she was behind what happened down here. When I confronted her, she wasn’t at all surprised about the attack and instead seemed rather pleased. It sickened me to hear that, and when I asked her for help she said. “No, everything is going according to Stable-Tec’s instructions,” I couldn’t believe what I heard but my biggest concern was to save the ponies of the stable that were left, so I demanded she open the Stable door. She refused. I said I would open the door myself from her terminal and she pulled a gun on me. I had no choice; she was going to kill me just for trying to save those who were still sane down here, so I shot her. I took a round to my chest but the security armour stopped it from getting in too deep. With her dead and out of the way, I used her terminal to get the passkey to unlock the stable door’s locking mechanism, and before I left, I used her key to open the safe to see what Stable-Tec wanted her to do. I was horrified and confused.

Stable-Tec had placed canisters throughout the stable’s ventilation system, each with a remote device to activate the canister. The canisters all contained a psychoactive drug that would cause the pony breathing it in to begin hallucinating, which, with prolong exposure, would cause mental instability, exactly what had occurred with the residents down here. The Overmare was to trigger these canisters two weeks after the door closed and record the residents’ mental degeneration and how the security and medical ponies dealt with the growing mental problem of the ponies with the limited medical resources the stable was provided with. I also found that the shots we of security and medical had been given before entering was the antidote to the drug, so that explains why we have been unaffected. Plus, why this stable lacked chemical analyse equipment so we couldn’t make one ourselves.

I simply can’t believe what Stable-Tec and that bitch of an Overmare have done to us, they were supposed to save us not kill us in this horrific way! I’m gathering whose left and we are leaving, even now after so many months there are still some residents who are still sane, hallucinating but are still mentally stable. The doctors have said that the drug will work its way out of their systems eventually once we are outside. I know leaving isn’t probably the best idea considering the radioactive fallout from the war but dying out there would be better than in here and going crazy.”

The long note came to an end, leaving me gobsmacked and horrified to learn about what happened in this stable. I stepped back with my horrified expression and sat down hard as my mind raced at what I just learned. Stable-Tec, the company that employed me, that I looked up to for helping so many ponies, that I sold things for, did all this!

“Crystal, are you alright?” Fruity asked in concern as he read my expression while pushing his hat up a little. I didn’t answer, too shocked at what I just learned to reply. He turned to the computer and began to read the note still on the screen. “Are you taking the piss?” He shouted in surprised anger. “The reason I’ve been shitting myself at what I’ve been seeing is because the pricks at Stable-Tec flooded this stable with hallucinogenic drugs?” He cried and stomped his hooves.

I shook my head after recovering enough from my stupor and stood back up. “We need to move quickly, the longer we stay down here the worse these hallucinations will get,” I told him.

“What the flying fuck is wrong with those twats?” Fruits seethed in anger.

“How do you think I feel?” I asked with my own hurt and angry growl to my voice, which to my ears carried a light electronic edge, as we left the security office and followed the corridor back to the security gate. “I worked for them before the bombs fell,”

The Science Labs were similar to the Recreational Rooms, in which we had windows letting us see inside each lab as we walked past. The labs looked nothing special, from what we could see with what was left intact and not wrecked or smashed, it seemed it was just general science studies that were carried out in here.

“Can’t believe they even made it so they couldn’t even fix the problem themselves,” Fruity sighed.

“I know, I can’t believe it either, this has come as a big ass shock to me,” I said sadly. “When we get out of here and get back to my house, I’m going to go through my records on my home terminal; I need to know if I sold any places to any ponies for this stable.” I really hope I didn’t, though I don’t even recall ever being told by Stable-Tec that there was even going to be a Stable out here by the eastern hills. Either they never told me, or it was built in the five years I couldn’t account for.

We rounded a corner that put us on a long corridor that would take us all the way to the side of the labs that we needed to be on and, thankfully, I spotted a sign hanging from the ceiling to indicate restrooms.

“Oh thank Celestia,” I said happily and quickly made my way into the mare’s room.

“I’ll just wait right here then,” Fruity said from the door as it closed. “It’s not like we have a psychoactive drug making us go insane or anything,” He shouted sarcastically.

“I’m sorry Fruity,” I said with a raised voice so he could hear me after I turned on the hot water tap at the row of sinks. “But I can’t go a second longer with this rotten apple on my face,”

“Hurry your mechanical flank up,” He urged.

I ignored the mechanical comment while I splashed water on my face and rubbed with my hooves. I sighed with relief as I felt the almost dried mush get washed away and when I opened my eyes to see if I missed any of it there was a pinkish haze over my vision.

“Oh no, not again,”

With my muzzle dripping wet I held my gaze firmly at my reflection. “Nope, not looking anywhere, not going to look at anything,” I said to myself. However, I didn’t need to as my reflection began to change. My cheeks began to droop and sag, my nose stretched, my lips drooped and my eyebrows spread apart. It was like the skin on my face was stretching. I lifted a hoof to my face and pushed at my cheek, to me it felt normal but to my reflection my cheek pushed back up and squashed like it was made of putty before drooping again and this time it tore off and dropped out of sight leaving a big gaping hole in my cheek. Then like my cheek, the rest of my drooping flesh dropped off of me one by one until a shiny black metal skeletal face with glowing, deep set, red eyes stared back at me. A simple etching could be seen on its left eyebrow. “I-01”.

I stared at what lay beneath my skin, scared that this was what I was now. “Fear, distrust, suspicion, will plague you all your life,” The machine said in a robotic version of my voice, which made me jump. “Nopony will love a machine that was built to be a spy,” With that, the rest of the flesh in the reflection began to tear off as I screamed.

Fruity burst in just as the pink haze lifted and looked as if to attack somepony. “Crystal, what’s wrong?” He asked worriedly.

“I, I, I, I had a horrible vision,” I cried, tears welling up in my eyes now that the reflection had faded back to reveal my now clean grey striped muzzle and blue eyes.

“Damn this stable,” Fruity muttered. “Are you ok?” He asked in concern.

“I will be once we get out of here,” I replied with a sniffle.

“You got that right,”

We left the bathroom and continued at a brisk pace. I could tell Fruity was worried as he knew he was about to have an hallucination himself as so far we’ve had one within moments of each other. Sure enough, as we rounded a turn to put us on in the corridor where the storeroom is with our target, Fruity froze as we passed through the threshold of an open hallway door and began to look around in confusion.

“Crystal, where’d you g…?” He suddenly stopped before finishing his question as he looked around in a panic. “How the fuck did I get back in my old boozer?” He asked in complete bafflement.

The hallucinations must’ve been getting strong enough now to wrap the very essence of the stable now. I dreaded to think of what my next one would be if we didn’t get out of here soon. I didn’t know what to do as my friend suffered his hallucination. The best I could think of was to keep him safe until he came out of it, so I frequently checked my EFS and looked up and down the corridor so I could be sure none of the insane survivors found us, especially that dress wearing hex vision nut.

Fruity suddenly backpedalled with a terrified shriek and passed under the threshold again and then stopped. “Huh?” He gasped, panting hard from his fright as he looked around at the grimy stable walls and then back at me. “I was in my old cocktail bar just then, it… it felt so real and then… Enclave burst through the door,” He explained, his breathing returning to normal.

“Are you ok?” I asked in concern.

“Couldn’t be bloody better,” He sighed.

I went to nuzzle him for reassurance, but stopped myself as I remembered how he pulled away from me back in the storeroom after I woke up after my SDP episode. I sighed quietly, hoping he wouldn’t notice as I turned away and continued down the corridor towards the storeroom that Tango Jack was hiding in.

“He’s in here,” I whispered as we came to the door to the storeroom.

“Let’s do this,” Fruity said quietly and I nodded in agreement and opened the door. The door slid up to reveal a room full of shelves and boxes of medical supplies and other scientific items and curled up pathetically between two boxes was Tango Jack. He was shivering and whimpering. I suppose he had some really bad hallucinations down here and the injuries I could see; he’d had some nasty run-ins with the local population. I walked into the room with Fruity close behind and as I stepped to the side to let the pegasus through the door, Tango lifted his head and looked at him in wide eyed terror.

XXXXX

Tango lifted his head from under his forehooves upon hearing the door slide up and the clip clop of hooves approaching. Fearing some of the local insane inhabitants had found him, he looked up to be sure but as his eyes met purple fur, the pink haze fell upon his vision. His eyes widened in horror as he watched the pegasus he could only see change into an Earth Pony and begin to grow in size, growing taller and taller until he was as tall as Princess Celetia was and his messy mulberry mane and tail became well-groomed and jet black.

“M-Motor Runner,” He gasped in fear of the tall cyberpony.

The hallucination of Motor Runner turned his head down at him and gave a dark smile as he stood in the way of the door. The duster changed to a black suit with a white undershirt and red tie to complete his look and when his form was complete the hallucination of Motor Runner lifted his cybernetic foreleg and pointed at him.

“You can’t hide from what you fear,” He said in his calm voice, yet it carried a threatening tone.

Suddenly the entire storeroom began to quake like the whole stable was being hit by an earthquake. He cried and held his head to protect himself from possible falling boxes but nothing fell. While the room shook, great cracks began to erupt across the walls and around the doorframe until there was a continuous crack that encircled the entire storeroom.

“What’s going on?” Tango cried fearfully as the quaking intensified.

Motor Runner’s dark grin grew as he stared down at the terrified stallion. “What scares you the most has arrived,” He said, and then suddenly, the ceiling of the storeroom was wrenched off like somepony had grabbed a hold of one end and just tore it off like a bottle cap. Tango looked around wide eyed as there was nothing but an empty void around him, it was like the storeroom was floating in another dimension or something but his thoughts were halted when there was an almighty crash in the far corner of what remained of the storeroom next to the door.

A giant steel hoof had crushed what was left of the wall in the corner of the room and shortly after the first, a second giant hoof smashed down on the opposite corner. “No, no, no, no, it’s not possible,” Tango shrieked as his attention was then drawn back to Motor Runner or rather the ghostly object rising up behind him. A massive blue holographic sail like mane with steel like spines rose up high behind the stallion, followed by two large military green ears with black insides, a black snout with an air intake vent followed and two massive mechanical yet pony like in appearance eyes turned down to stare at Tango as the giant robot head rose higher and higher. Once the giant machine’s head raised high enough a massive gatling gun pivoted down and aimed at the terrified stallion. The giant forehooves were connected to two great legs that met up with the machine’s torso that held the machine up at its full height while it stared down at Tango, even bringing its giant particle cannons to bear on him. To Tango Jack, the appearance of the giant war machine was made even more terrifying by ghostly whisper or flame effect that seemed to surround the entire thing.

“You fear what you can’t hope to stop or comprehend, you fear this giant robot and it will kill you,” The hallucination of Motor Runner darkly smirked as the machine’s gatling gun began to rotate which made Tango Jack curl up into a pathetic ball and scream in utter terror.

XXXXX

I looked at Fruity and he just shrugged his wings. As soon as Tango laid eyes on the pegasus he proceeded to freak out and now he was curled in a tight ball as if trying to hide from something. Fruity nodded to him in the manner that said “Go on,” and I sighed. Well, this was why we were here after all. I pulled Lucky 13 from its holster and approached the whimpering stallion that was now muttering somepony by the name “Krogoth” over and over again and pointed it at him once before hiding under his hooves again. I stared him while I worked up the courage to put this foal molesting sicko to sleep for good but seeing him looking so pathetic, so scared and so defeated, I couldn’t do it. I grunted and put my revolver away but an idea came to mind as I thought about what I saw about him. I stepped up close and bent down so I could whisper into his ear while I used my nano-fibre tail to reach around and to pluck the pendent I needed for proof from his neck.

“You don’t deserve to die, that’ll be an easy way out for you, a blessing for somepony in this place, no, you get to live, but you get to live with the fear, to be haunted every waking day with the things you’ve done and suffer for it, good bye,” I whispered and turned my back on him and started to trot away with his pendent in my tail.

“We’re supposed to kill him aren’t we?”

“Yes, but he doesn’t deserve the easy way out, let him suffer,” I said with a growl. “Besides, Motor Runner said he wanted the pendent as proof of the kill, he has no reason to doubt us if we give him this,” I said while holding up the gold pendent I had snagged from the terrified stallion.

“I see the wisdom in that, does that mean we can leave now?” Fruit asked hopeful.

I nodded.

“Thank fucking Faust for that,” Fruity cheered.

We left the foal molester in the storeroom to suffer with his hallucinations and set off at a brisk pace following the corridors in the Science Labs towards the Atrium. Now that we had what we came for, there was nothing else keeping us here, so we needed to leave as soon as possible. We took a left turn from the corridor that would take us into the Living Quarters where that mare melted through the door and this put us on a path that would take us straight passed Medical and to the Atrium.

We opened the door back to the Atrium and quickly made for the stairs.

“Auntie Glimmer says” We froze as we heard the familiar voice of the hex vision mare using her puppet voice behind us. “Game over foals,” She said in her normal voice as we turned from the stairs to find the mare with her puppet raised and staring at us.

“Shit, can’t make a run for it or owt like in here, it’s too open,” Fruity whispered.

“And she’d blast us before we could make a move,”

“It’s time for your punishment,” The mare said calmly, her horn lighting up.

“Fruity, use your Q-Modulator to distract her, I’m going to flank her from behind, the Atrium is open space, we can fight her in here,” I whispered. He nodded and flapped his wings, cringing as his injured wing must still hurt and grasped his plasma rifle in his hooves.

“Hey, Miss Bat Shit Crazy, you couldn’t hit a flaming turd if it hit you in the face,” Fruity taunted as he raised himself in the air and aimed his rifle to draw her attention.

“Such bad manners and language, looks like Mrs Nessy and I will have to be very thorough with you,” She said and red lightning shot from her eyes.

I took that as my chance and begun to quietly circle around the mare as she blasted her hex vision at Fruity who dodged and returned fire with his own burning balls of green plasma. The mare didn’t bother to dodge; she simply shot the slow moving balls of plasma out of the air with her hex vision before firing back at him. How much magic does this crazed lunatic have? I pulled Lucky 13 from its holster as I closed in on the mare, glad that Fruity was doing a good job keeping her busy.

“Is that the best you can do, ow my wing, ugh have you got nowt better than that?” He taunted. “OH SHIT!” He cried as he just barely avoided a blast of red lightning.

I got behind the mare and pushed the muzzle of the revolver against her skull. “Game over indeed,” I mumbled. There was movement in the corner of my eye, turning my right eye to look I saw that the mare had lifted and turned her puppet to look at me and its eyes were glowing red. Oh cock! I quickly pulled the trigger with my tongue, blasting her brains out, but not before feeling a searing lance across the right side of my face, forcing me to stumble backwards slightly and scream in a burning pain.

Warning, right optical unit offline,
Warning, right audio receptor offline…

Cause… Magical Overload…

Status… Repair system engaged…

“Oh shit, Crystal are you alive?!” Fruity asked as he landed by the dead body of the puppet mare.

“I’m fine,” I replied with a sigh. “I think her attack numbed the right side of my face because I can’t feel anything, how bad is it?” I asked while turning my head so I could see him better with my left eye since I was practically blind in my right. I know her attack had blinded me and also deafened me on my right side as well as shot my nerves as I couldn’t feel any pain at all despite being hit in the face with a magical blast.

“You have a nasty looking burn from your nose going across your eye and up to your ear. Your eye looks like it’s been melted shut. It’s a good thing you can’t feel owt, that kind of burn would be excruciating,” Fruity replied.

“Can you get me a healing potion from my saddle pack please?” I asked.

“Sure,” He nodded softly and took a potion from my pack and hoofed it to me. “Why do you even need these, don’t you have a regeneration talisman or something that heals your injuries?” He asked as I popped the cork and downed the purple fluid.

“Oh Fruity please, don’t treat me like I’m just a machine now that you know what I am,” I said with a hurt voice, my facial expression also reflecting that too. “I’m still flesh and blood despite the endoskeleton,” I cringed as I could feel a strong burning pain return to the right side of my face as the healing potion went to work fixing the burned flesh.

“I’m sorry,” Fruity frowned and looked down with an ashamed look. “I didn’t mean that,”

I sighed, my ears wilted as I looked up at him. “I forgive you, I deserve some negativity from you from how I treated you before,” I said sadly. “C’mon, let’s get out of here,” He nodded and we left the Atrium and begun to ascend the stairs.

“Um, something just occurred to me,” Fruity said as we climbed the steps. “How is that psychoactive drug affecting you with you being part machine and all?”

That was actually a valid point. Hmm, why was the drug affecting me with me being more machine than pony? Wait, my heart and lungs were organic so I breathe air like another pony and my brain was still organic too, despite there being a computer in it as well. Going off what I learned in school about pony biology, oxygenated blood from the lungs goes into the heart and is then sent off through the arteries to the rest of the body. I suppose since the drug was airborne my blood wasn’t only taking oxygen to my brain which was the only way I, myself, could explain how I could be experiencing these hallucinations and I explained that to Fruity.

“Makes sense,” He said with a nod as we stepped out into the long corridor that would take us back to the stable door.

“Hey, my threat warning just disappeared, we’re no longer in any danger!” I exclaimed as I noticed the exclamation mark that had been a constant in my vision since we started our little adventure down here had just vanished.

Fruity turned and looked back at the stairwell. “Go back down the stairs and tell me if it comes back,” He said with a thoughtful expression.

I nodded and started down the stairs again. About halfway down, the exclamation mark returned and I quickly bolted back up the stairs. “It came back about half way down,” I told him.

“I think I have an idea about that,” He said as we started down the long corridor.

“Oh?”

He nodded. “Yeah, we only started having those hallucinations after we were actually got down there and when you had your, what did you call it, SDP episode? It brought you back up here and it told me that it would retreat to a safe location to protect your consciousness, not to mention I’d been awake the entire time and didn’t experience a hallucination. So, what I think is, that threat detector of yours was picking up the drug in the air this entire time,”

I blinked as I thought about what he said; it made sense since the threat detector had been active since we got down there. “You know, I think you’re right,” I said in agreement.

Fruity smiled and puffed out his chest with pride. I smiled as well at seeing his reaction to me agreeing with his assumption.

Finally we came to the open door to the lobby of the stable door. “At last, we can finally leave this lunatic asylum,” Fruity cheered.

We passed through the door and suddenly a pink haze fell over my vision, stopping me dead. Why was I suffering another hallucination, when we’re out of the drugged air? Wait, there was still enough in my system to make me have another. Oh no. I looked up to focus on the stable door but as I did, I seemed to have a bright light shine in my face. The light was so bright, I couldn’t see anything at all, but as quickly as the light appeared, and it faded. I didn’t find myself in the stable like I remembered myself being just a moment ago, instead I was standing in the middle of a crystal road I remembered well from my foalhood and the sight of the crystal palace directly in front of me was all the confirmation I needed.

“Crystal Palace Boulevard,” I breathed out in shock as I looked around. I remembered this street because it was a hub for shopping and meeting ponies. When I visited my grandparents, we always came to this street. The only things out of place were that there was not a single pony walking the street, and that behind me there was a stable door archway.

“How could you do it Crystal?” A very familiar female voice asked. I whirled around to my left to see my mother wearing a very disappointed look on her voice.

“This was our home!” The same voice came again, this time from my right. Turning to the voice I saw my mother again there too.

“This was where you were born,” I turned to another again to my left and next to the first.

“These were neutral ponies and didn’t deserve to be wiped out,” Another to my right said.

“And worst of all, your grandparents still lived here,” Said another to the left.

“Did they deserve to die?” Another to my right asked. I was being surrounded by copies of angry and disappointed copies of my mother; it broke my heart to see the hurt and disappointment on their faces.

“You are no daughter of mine if you are capable of this,” A final one said directly in front of me.

“No it’s not true!” I cried, but my cry was drowned out when the Crystal Palace exploded in a tremendous explosion of balefire when a large missile struck it. I screamed in emotional pain as I watched the multiple copies of my mother burn and turn to ash before I stepped back enough and passed through the threshold of the stable door archway. As soon as I passed under the door the hallucination ended and in front of me was the lobby to the stable door again. I panted hard as my mind reeled at the assault it just had. Yes, I feared greatly I was used in some way or another. I had no idea what could have happened in the five years I’d been supposedly dead, so if I had been used for something that could have led to the deaths of many, I dreaded to think of what my mother would think of me.

“KEEP THAT THING AWAY FROM ME!” I heard Fruity shriek in alarm and as I looked up to see him he whirled around and began to gallop towards me as if to escape somepony or something. He must be having a hallucination as well. Wait, he’s heading right for me and under the influence of the hallucination he can’t see me.

Unfortunately, my realisation came too late as before I could dodge, the fleeing Pegasus crashed into my chest with his shoulder. I let out a soft grunt from the impact and slid back a few inches while Fruity let out a painful cry as he fell to the floor after he effectively rugby tackled me.

“Ah-ah-ah-ow,” He cried as he held his should while on the floor.

“Are you ok?” I asked as I held out my hoof to help him up. He took my hoof and I pulled him back to his hooves but he resumed holding his shoulder again once he was on his hooves.

“Considering I feel like I ran head first into a concrete wall, yea, I’m good,” He replied with a sigh at the end. “These hallucinations are getting out of hoof,”

“Tell me about, I just had multiple copies of my mum tell me how disappointed they were in me,”

Fruity frowned. “I just relived the day that happened to me,” He said while nodding to his exposed flank. His duster tails must have fallen away from his flank after he crashed into me and revealed his dashite mark.

“I’m sorry, that must have been a horrible day for you…” I said softly.

“No fucking shit,” He said with a sarcastic laugh. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, that whole thing just shook me up a bit, and I didn’t mean be so snarky with you there,”

I gave a slight smile at his apology. “It’s ok,” I then nodded to the huge steel door that separated us from the outside. “C’mon, let’s get out of here,”

Fruity nodded and we re-entered the lobby. I suppose we were both as ready as ever to leave and put this Tirek forsaken place behind us.

"I so need to get bladdered after this," Fruited sighed. "Just to forget all the nightmare fuel we've seen,"

"I think I'll join you in that," I agreed.

I for one, never, ever, ever want to come back here. I wouldn’t wish for some poor soul to lose their mind coming here looking for shelter or goods or like us, for a bounty. My eyes widened, now that I could feel my right eye again thanks to the healing potion, but still couldn’t see out of it. I turned to Fruity.

“Fruity, we gotta seal this stable up, we can’t have some innocent pony coming here and succumbing to the drug like the residents here,” I said with concern.

“How would we seal this place up?” He asked while gesturing to the thirteen ton steel door firmly lodged into place.

“We’ll have to disable the door control switches,” I said while pointing to the lever the pegasus had pulled to close the door.

“We just smash it right?” He asked. I nodded. “I have just the thing,” He said as he stuffed his head into his pocket for a minute before pulling back out with two Micro Mana Cells in his maw. He quickly sat on his haunches and spat the two cells out into his hooves. “If we rupture the casing on these cells, it’ll destabilise them and they’d want to release their energy. Eventually, that would result in an explosion close to that of a grenade and would destroy the door controls, permanently sealing the stable,” Fruity explained.

“That’s great, how do we do that?” I asked.

“Well, a hard enough impact would do it, but since you’re so heavy and strong, you stomping on them would be all we need,”

“Oh, ok,” I nodded to him and he placed the cells on the floor. I lifted a forehoof and brought it down hard onto the small yellow battery like power cells. There was a loud crack that echoed down the long corridor as my hoof made contact with the small hard object. I lifted my hoof and Fruity leaned in close to inspect the damage if any.

“Good, there’s a sizeable crack in the casing and I can already see a light starting to seep out, do the same with the next one while I open the door,”

I nodded and Fruity rolled the damaged cell between the cables trailing down the back of the control panel and then pulled the lever to begin opening the door. As I stomped on the second cell the large mechanical locking arm descended from the ceiling and connected with the huge slap of steel, and with a teeth grating screech and an almighty pull, it yanked the giant steel door out of its shut position. I was thankful I was still half deaf as I was sure that metallic screech would have made my ears bleed.

“Dear sweet Celestia that was loud,” Fruity whined while holding his eyes, unfortunately he had all the decibels ringing down his ears.

“Here, the other cell,” I said as I rolled the other one too him. He nodded and picked it up with his wing and joined me at my side as we waited for the door to roll to the side.

“I so want out,” Fruity moaned.

“Me too,” I agreed.

The mechanical arm released the door and returned to the ceiling, and the huge steel cog door rolled to the side to grant us our freedom from the insane asylum of the Marejave. As the door rolled into its resting place to the side, it revealed a Desert Ranger standing on the other side. We froze mid step as it caught us off guard to suddenly run into a Ranger out here. He looked to Fruity first and then slowly turned to me, as I looked at his helmet and at his glowing red lenses, I felt an icy chill run down my spine.

“Good evening I-01, I’ve been expecting you.”

Chapter 8: Back to Square One

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Fallout Equestria: Influx

Chapter 8: Back to Square One


A flurry of questions exploded through my mind at the appearance of this Desert Ranger that stood before us as we stepped out of Stable 16, but two questions came to the forefront of my mind. “How does he know what I am?” And “How did he know to find us here?”

The Ranger looked similar to the ones we’d met already, but his overcoat looked a little more beat up and his armour looked more heavy duty. If I were to guess, I would say this was a higher ranking ranger than the ones we’d met already and seen more action than them as well. Not to mention that fifty calibre anti-machine rifle he was packing in a military-grade battlesaddle on his side wasn’t enough of a giveaway that he was tough.

“Who are you bright eyes?” Fruity asked as he stared at the glowing red lenses of the helmeted stallion.

“My name is…” He paused unexpectedly and tilted his head slightly as if to think before he finished his reply. “…Nexus.”

Fruity extended a wing to hide his face as he turned to me and whispered. “That’s a bold face lie if I ever heard one.”

“I agree, why would he stop and think of his own name?”

“Exactly!”

We turned back to the Ranger from our little private discussion to see him fixing his gaze solely on me.

I had a bad feeling about this. “What do you want with me?” I finally asked the dreaded question.

“You are to accompany me back to the Marejave Production Facility; my orders are to return you to the facility intact.”

This could actually be my chance to get some answers. “What am I to do when we get there?”

“You are to be dismantled for analysis,” He answered in a rather deadpan matter, like what he just said didn’t sound like. “I’m taking you to a place where you’re going to die.”

“You’re going to kill her?” Fruity shouted angrily, shrugging his wings so his Q-Modulator swung off his back and down to his side.

“It is necessary for the Mark 2 line,” Nexus replied dismissively.

“There is not a cat in hell’s chance I’m going to let you drag me off to be killed,” I roared with anger as I plucked Lucky 13 from its holster.

Nexus just began to walk towards me despite both of us having our weapons drawn. It was like he didn’t care or even feel threatened by our guns. “Stay back,” I ordered, which sounded like a loud mumble over the mouthgrip in my mouth but he kept coming. I pulled the trigger and fired a single .357 magnum round. There was a resounding dong as the bullet collided with the dome top segment of the helmet and harmlessly bounced off. With that, I emptied the rest of the cylinder, but each bullet just bounced off his helmet, leaving nothing but a small ding or scrape. The most damage I actually did was crack a lens.

“Hey asswipe, up here,” Fruity taunted. Nexus looked up at the purple pegasus now hovering with his plasma rifle aimed at him.

“This does not concern you, pegasus,” Nexus said before turning back to me.

“It does when you’re threatening my friend!”

I used that momentary distraction to rear up onto my forehooves and thrust my hind hooves into his armoured head as hard as I could. There was an almighty metallic clang as my hooves collided and I yelped in pain and surprise at the solid impact. It felt like I just applebucked a solid wall, but my efforts were rewarded with the sound of a heavy thud from something falling over along with a hollow metal clanging as I suspected that I kicked his helmet off.

“Hah, nice one,” Fruity laughed as he landed beside me as I picked myself back up.

“Ow, that armour must be some seriously heavy duty stuff cause that hurt my hooves,” I groaned as I turned around to face the downed stallion.

The ranger didn’t stay down for long because as soon as I turned to face him he quickly rolled back over to his hooves and he pushed himself back up and faced us like nothing happened. However, this left us gawking in bewilderment with no small amount of fear.

“H-he’s one of y-you,” Fruity jittered out while taking a step back as the revealed skeletal machine fixed us with its gaze. Its deep set glowing red eyes focusing on me again inside those skull like eye sockets. Above the left eye where the eyebrow would be, like me, its number was etched into the metal plating. “I-02 IS”.

“Correction, I am a Mark 2, not a Mark 1,” The machine corrected.

“I don’t give a shit what you are, you’re still not taking me to die,” I hissed. “How did you even find me here?”

“I followed your energy signature,” It replied simply.

“My energy signature?” I asked tilting my head.

“Yes, your power cells give off a power signature that I was able to track; they lead me to you,” He answered. Was I so easy to track that if ponies just tune their scanners to whatever frequency picks up my energy signatures, they could find me? This could be a big problem for me.

“Crystal, this Micro Mana Cell is starting to burn a hole in my pocket,” Fruity whispered as the machine began to approach us again.

“Argh, how are we supposed to seal the Stable with this thing in our way?” I asked quietly as we began to circle around. It wasn’t until we circled around enough until we had I-02 IS between us and the open stable door that an idea came to mind. “Fruity, we gotta lure that thing into the stable and close the door and trap it inside before those cells blow,”

“Good idea,” Fruity said as he took to the air and aimed his rifle while I continued to circle around.

“Come and get me you walking toaster,” I taunted.

I-02 IS lunged forward, a little faster than I anticipated and forced me to jump to the side to avoid the armoured machine. Its red gaze was still fixed on me as it began to throw punches with his forehooves. Thankfully, my threat warning flashed just as each strike was about to come, allowing me to duck and weave to avoid the crushing blows. I assumed they would hurt a lot as he’d likely have the same mechanical strength boost that I did but that also meant I couldn’t let him get a hit on Fruity as he’d probably kill him with a single blow.

“Duck!” Fruity shouted. I quickly jumped back and got low as my pegasus friend fired two balls of burning plasma at the machine. The robot continued to keep its gaze on me; it seemed oblivious to the incoming plasma. However, as the incoming balls of heat energy neared, the machine weaved to the side to avoid the first ball and weaved back almost fluidly to avoid the second. It was almost as if it sensed the incoming attacks, like it had a threat warning like me.

“Shit…” Fruity sighed as he missed. He flew closer as he aimed his weapon to reduce the range, but as he got closer, I noticed the machine’s black tail snake into the air. My vision flashed and a reticule appeared with an identification marker highlighting the rising tail as “Nano-fibre”. A nano-fibre tail like mine, wait, oh no!

“Fruity, look out!” I cried in alarm but it was too late. The end of the nano-fibre tail wrapped around one of Fruity’s hind legs and once it had him, it violently pulled him down to the ground with a thud before lifting him back into the air, swinging him around before slamming him back into the cavern floor. Fruity let out a cry of pain as his back impacted the hard ground. For once, the machine turned its gaze off me as he looked to the helpless pegasus as he picked him back up off the floor and then swung him back down into the ground with a crunch, which was followed by another pained cry.

“Let him go!” I screamed as I charged forward and twisted around on my forehooves, striking out with my hind hooves in an applebuck to his face. This time, it didn’t hurt as much and I didn’t fall flat on my face as I expected the weight behind what I was hitting.

“Thank you,” Fruity painfully breathed as he fluttered over to the stable’s outside door control after the machine let him go after my strike. I however paid the price of taking my eyes off my target as when I turned back to the robot, he smashed me in the side of the head with a forehoof. I felt my jaw unhinge for a moment before it clicked back into place as I staggered back.

That hurt, unbelievably so. As much as I hate what I’ve become, being part machine, I couldn’t help but be grateful right now about the durability as that hit alone would have turned a jaw bone into powder. My threat warning flashed and I quickly jumped back to avoid another hook to the jaw. However, the machine was now on the offensive, it closed the gap and I had to dance around his hoof swipes to avoid getting hit. Thankfully, my threat warning was alerting me quickly enough but he was getting so close.

I looked back to see if I had manoeuvred myself to the open stable door while avoiding the machine’s blows. I let out an internal sigh of relief at seeing the huge open hole in the concrete wall; I was where I needed to be but just as I turned to face I-02 IS again I felt a solid impact to the side of my head. The hoof punch rattled my brain, my audio receptors even rang like my old organic ears used to do, and my vision swam as I fell to the floor with a pained groan.

“This is your purpose. Why do you resist?” The machine asked as it stood before me, its mouth moving up and down as it talked but its voice unnervingly coming out sounding perfectly normal like a living pony’s. The combination of robotic skeletal head and normal like voice was very creepy and off putting.

“What sort of a purpose is that?” Fruity barked.

“That is the purpose of obsolete units, to be broken down and recycled for the newer models,” I-02 IS replied.

“I’m not a machine,” I said with a groan as my senses returned to normal and I pulled myself back up to my hooves.

“Why delude yourself?” He asked as his AM rifle aimed down to my forelegs. “Did you malfunction to believe you are alive?”

“She is alive you moron!” Fruity shouted. I felt a brief wave of happiness at Fruity’s words as he defended my claim of being alive.

“The only way I’ll ever go with you is if you drag my broken body back with you,” I growled.

“So be it,” The machine said in a tone that sounded disappointed. The AM rifle on his battlesaddle aimed at my right foreleg but didn’t fire. The machine worked his jaw as if to bite something, but as nothing was happening, it stopped and froze for a moment, staring into space as if suddenly realising something. It turned its head to look at the broken helmet laying on the floor several feet away.

“Hah, he can’t use his AM rifle, his helmet contained the firing mechanism,” Fruity laughed before groaning with pain and holding his ribs.

I smirked at the machine. “Well then, come and get me.”

The machine let out what sounded like a frustrated growl and lunged for me again. I waited until the last possible moment and jumped. We had only one shot at this so I hoped this would work. I jumped up and over the machine, kicking him in the back of the head as he sailed under me and landed on my forehooves. With my hindquarters still in the air, I tucked my hind legs in tight and thrust out with all my strength for another applebuck. My hooves connected with his rear again. I looked over my shoulder to watch as he stumbled from the combination of being kicked in the back of the head and my applebuck.

“Fruity NOW!” I cried.

Fruity nodded and pulled the lever for the door control. I hoped the machine would fall through the threshold before the steel door would roll into place. We watched with baited breath as the machine stumbled towards the threshold as the warning sirens blared.

“Oh no,” I cried as the machine fell over onto its side and crashed into the steel threshold rim. I felt defeated as we missed our chance to trap the machine because the two MMCs would explode before we could even try again but I doubt the machine would give us that chance even if we tried.

The huge steel door rolled into position for the locking arm to push it back into the steel rim and I then noticed that the robot’s AM rifle was laying inside the groove for one of steel door’s tapered cog teeth. I felt a little bit of hope build in my heart and prayed to the goddesses for a miracle. With an ear bleeding screech the locking arm shoved the huge steel door into place and to our ultimate joy and relief the tapered cog tooth ran over the rifle barrel, squashing it flat and trapping it and keeping the robot wedged between the floor and the door.

“Yes, may have not been inside the stable but we still trapped your ass,” Fruity cheered as he joined me.

“Yeah,” I agreed.

Suddenly there was a dull thud from behind the door along with a muffled bang. The first MMC must have detonated, we didn’t have much time.

“We gotta go, like now,” I urged.

“Eeyup,” Fruity agreed.

I-02 IS began to struggle. Being trapped on his side, it was awkward from him to get his hooves under him, but he was certainly trying to push himself up or away from the door. Each attempt put strain on his battlesaddle, but the military grade straps that were being used were holding steady. He’d tear his armour apart before he’d get out of that saddle.

Fruity reached into his duster pocket with a wing and pulled out the fractured and now glowing MMC.

“Ow, ow, ow, hot, hot, hot,” He whined, juggling the cell between his wings above his back. He grabbed the cell with a forehoof, composing himself despite the heat the cell was giving off and looked down at the struggling machine. “Here, have a blast,” He said with a straight face and just dropped the cell by the machine’s back.

Fruity nodded to me and we turned tail and began to run away from the struggling robot. I swear this cave seemed longer on the way out than it did on the way in. Just as we rounded a corner and came to the glowing pile of goo that had once been a gecko, a tremendous explosion rocked the cave. A strong shockwave ran through the cavern and nearly threw Fruity off his hooves. I breathed a sigh of relief now that Stable 16 was sealed for good and we likely destroyed that robot in the process. We couldn’t bask in our victory for long as the shockwave triggered stalactites to fall. We ran as fast as we could for the open gate but just as we were about to break out into the open night air a stalactite or a large rock shattered against my back. I screamed in agony and fell out the door and down the slight slope before coming to a stop in the open night air, panting heavily from our run to safety.

“We, *pant* did it,” Fruity gasped.

“Ow, yes, we did,” I sighed, lying upside down in the night air.

XXXXX

By the time we made it back to my old home in Chadderton outside of Hayside, it was the middle of the night and the moon was high in the sky, casting down its bright white illuminating light onto the old residential district. During our trip back from the stable, my magic overloaded eye and ear had reactivated, restoring my hearing and sight back to one hundred percent and I gave Fruity another healing potion to help him with the damage he'd taken from the battering he took from that machine's nano-fibre tail.

"Ugh, I just want to get bladdered," Fruity sighed as we entered my old house.

"I don't normally like to drink with the intention to get drunk but after today's events, I'd agree with you there," I added as I shut the front door and followed my friend into the kitchen while also being careful to avoid the hole I made when I fell through from upstairs.

Fruity had the fridge open and had his muzzle buried into the lower compartment when I entered the kitchen after him. "Where are they, I know I saw some in here yesterday," He muttered. "Ah ha, there you are!" He exclaimed before he pulled his head back and he had a six pack of lager in his muzzle, he then set them down by my forehooves. "Hmm take them into the living room please, there are like two more in the bottom drawer here, I'll get these," He said as he dove back in.

"Ok," I agreed and turned back to the hall and used my tail to pick up the lukewarm pack of beers and walked down the hall and into the living room before setting the beers on the coffee table. I lay myself down on one of the two ruined sofas, which groaned under my extreme weight but thankfully held, and waited for Fruity to join me. I didn't have to wait long as he practically ran into the room, a pack of beers held by his muzzle, and one balanced on a wing, causing him to cringe in pain. He quickly dropped the pack held by his maw next to the one I brought in.

"Ow, ow, ow, my wing," He whimpered before flicking the cans onto the table.

"You need to look after your wings Fruity, they've been through a lot recently," I chided with a sigh.

"I know, I know," Fruity groaned as he flopped down onto the other sofa.

"Ugh, what a day," I sighed and reached out with a hoof and grasped one of the five hundred millilitre cans in the six pack and tugged it out of the plastic holder. Fruity also plucked one of his own out and used a wing with a practiced ease to pop the cap. Despite the beer being lukewarm from being sat in a fridge that hadn't worked for nearly two centuries and the cans being in there for Celestia only knows how long since before the war ended, it still let out a burst of vapour as the lager was surprisingly not flat. I suppose the beer didn't go flat with the can being an airtight container and was sheltered enough to not corrode to cause any leakage.

"Awesome," Fruity said as he brought the open can to his lips and took a large swig. "Hmm, Coltsberg, best beer ever,"

If I were to be honest, I didn't like to drink for one reason really. I didn't like lager. It’s bitter and leaves a nasty after taste in my mouth. However, considering the things we've been through in Stable 16 and the things we'd seen, I was willing to put up with the horrid taste and tacky feeling it'll give me in my mouth to hopefully get drunk to the point I might forget the things I'd seen.

"So," Fruity began, finishing his first can rather quickly if I might add. "What the hell was that thing?" He asked as he plucked a second can.

"I honestly don't know," I replied as I popped the cap on my first can and took a swing, cringing at the horrible bitter taste on my tongue.

"It said it was a Mark 2, but..." He paused to take a swig. "...A Mark 2 of what?"

"That's a good question and it's something I'm trying to find out. I-02 IS is a Mark 2 of whatever the hell I am,"

"Hang on a sec," Fruity said with wide eyes while taking another big swig. "He came for you right?" I simply nodded as the machine did address me by my machine name only. "Do you think that thing has been looking for you since the bombs fell?"

That was actually a good and disturbing question. Could that thing have been looking for me since the bombs fell? I don't know. Hmm, when I think about it, two hundred years would be plenty of time for the robot to search likely places for me and I wasn't exactly hidden in Manehattan General. In fact, I would have been in plain sight since I was in a public stasis ward. I-02 IS had stated he followed my energy signature to Stable 16 so if he had been searching for me since then he would have easily have found me in stasis. No, its search for me was recent...

My eyes bulged out as memories of our escape of the MASA HQ flashed to the forefront of my mind along with the memory of arriving in the ruins of New Pegasus when I had the feeling of being watched from back at the MASA.

"He was there..." I breathed out in shock.

"Come again?" Fruity asked after finishing his second can and opening his third.

"That machine, he's been tracking us since we arrived in the Marejave,"

"And what gives you that idea?"

"The busted front doors and pushed up security shutters at the MASA HQ," I replied with my eyes still wide.

Fruity opened his mouth but then closed it as he thought for a moment but soon his eyes widened. "Holy Faust, you might be right! I mean a frenzied Sentry Drone wouldn't have been able to damage the shutters like that and the dead bolted front doors were broken inwards not outwards."

I nodded. "And I told you I had a feeling we were being watched when we got to the ruins didn't I?" I asked, my drinking pegasus friend nodded. "And my feeling of being watched came from the MASA HQ,"

"So what does this mean?"

"Somepony is out to get me, that's what I'm able to deduce from our meeting with I-02 IS. It did say it was ordered to 'retrieve' me. So, it was ordered, but by who, and why, what could I, a Mark 1 according to the robot, possibly have that the Mark 2s need?" I asked.

"How the fuck should I know?"

"Neither do I." I groaned and took a big gulp of my lager, ignoring the horrible taste. "I have a suspicion it has something to do with how I ended up like this and if it is, my life is going to get a whole lot more complicated,"

"WELCOME TO THE WASTELAND!" Fruity cheered in a deadpan manner and finished his third can.

Yeah, welcome to the wasteland indeed.

XXXXX

*Snore, snort, snore*

I shook my head and looked down at the pile of empty cans next to the couch my friend was passed out on. He had drunk fifteen and a half cans before he dozed off. I suppose the day's events were more tiring than I had thought and the alcohol helped to knock him out. I wish it had the same effect on me though. I had six cans myself and considering I've never had enough lager to get drunk before, I'd assume six cans of five hundred millilitres would have enough alcoholic units to at least make me a bit tipsy. But I felt as sharp and as clear headed as I did since we got home.

I sighed as I looked down at the empty can of Coltsberg in my hoof, wondering why I still felt sober while my friend went through the phases of drunkenness before passing out. I suppose him passing out when he did was a blessing as his infamous sex beast side didn't surface. But, why am I am still sober, surely after six cans I should at least feel something? Well, my power readout in my HUD had gone up by two percent but that's beside the point.

"Is it something to do with my physiology, being part machine and having a..." My thought process was halted as the last word of my mental question struck a chord in my brain. I looked down at my stomach, exposed as I had hung my duster over the back of the couch along with my undershirt earlier that evening. I gently rubbed my belly where my stomach should be. "My stomach isn't organic like my heart and lungs, its synthetic and what I've been drinking has been magically processed by it. I wouldn't put it past whoever made me to have made it so that anything harmful in what I eat and drink is filtered out." I reasoned. If that were the case, why did I suffer the effects of the psychoactive drug in Stable 16's air? Perhaps that fell down to biology, since my heart and lungs were organic and there were no mechanics there to filter things. This was just something else to add to the questions that were mounting up regarding my new mechanical anatomy. Just what could my mechanical body do?

I gently rolled off the couch and as quietly as I could trotted to the hall and then, as quietly and gingerly, began to climb the stairs, being very careful where I stepped to keep the squeaky boards to a minimum as not to wake up the sleeping pegasus. As I reached the top of the stairs, I stopped and stared at the now gaping hole in the floor, subconsciously reaching up to rub at the left side of my face as a flash back of me getting my face torn off when I fell through flashed into my head. I had to shake my head before getting lost in horrible and painful memories and to regain my focus. I carefully stepped to the left from the hole and entered my bedroom, making my way to the Stable-Tec computer sitting on my desk.

"Might as well put my mind at ease," I sighed, worried at what I might find. "It's not like I'm going to sleep tonight with this on my mind."

Since leaving Stable 16, the idea that I had sold ponies positions to that stable had been playing on my mind and now that I wouldn't be getting to sleep tonight I needed to put my fears to rest. I hoped to Celestia I didn't, because if I did, I would be responsible for their deaths, which would make me feel like a murderer because I essentially condemned them to go insane and die in that stable of horrors. I checked the terminal and surprisingly it was still receiving power from the mains. Gulping with anticipation, I pressed the power button and with a soft whirr the machine began its boot up process. A part of me was hoping the old computer wouldn't work, but I knew the hope was for naught as with a beep the screen flashed to my desktop, revealing everything the way I left it. Stable-Tec technology, built to last.

I pressed a couple of keys that I programmed into my computer to instantly bring up certain folders as I would often get called by Stable-Tec for sales figures, confirmations, and other such sales information so I made a shortcut to my sales record folder by holding Ctrl and pressing S at the same time.

The folder opened up onto the screen to reveal spreadsheet documents and word documents detailing my sale records, customer information and other documentation. I found my Stable Place Sales Sheet and opened it and stared, wide eyed. The document held the names and stable locations of over two thousand ponies that I would have to look through. This was going to be a long night.

XXXXX

I groaned and sat back from the computer a few hours later and rubbed my at eyes, feeling a little eye strain from staring at the screen for so long. Not a single pony I sold a place to went to Stable 16, as a matter of fact I didn't see a single Stable 16 anywhere. I had sold positions to Stables 19, 21, 26, 29 and 34 but not 16 and it clearly is or was an operational Stable before the bombs fell, so why...?

"What are you doing?" Fruity asked from beside me, startling me as I didn't even hear him enter.

"Gah, son of a bitch, don't do that!" I screamed after jumping nearly clear across the room from having the daylights scared out of me.

"I did call you twice from the door," He groaned while rubbing at his temple with a hoof. "You were in your own little world staring at that screen,"

After I calmed down I sighed and sat back down by the computer. "I'm sorry; I was just trying to be sure I didn't sell any ponies a place in that hellhole we just sealed up,"

"And did you?" He asked as he sat down still with a hoof to his head.

"Thankfully, no," I said as I pressed a button to back out of the sales record sheet and back to my desktop. I pressed my arrow keys to highlight my Stable-Tec Network icon. I knew I'd likely not get a connection to any Stable-Tec servers but I wasn’t trying to get a connection. What I was trying to do now was to see if there were any e-mails or notifications they sent me after I was hospitalised when my organic body's illnesses became life threatening.

Immediately, when I selected it, a warning window popped up saying that connection to Stable-Tec Network was offline but that was to be expected so I clicked it off and it opened the window to the network window in offline mode. Thankfully in offline mode, if I had any messages I received they would still be in my inbox and I'd be able to view them. I just wouldn’t be able to reply to them.

I opened my inbox folder and found four unread messages. The first one was a notice to say that my contract with Stable-Tec had been terminated as a result of my illness, the second was a get well soon e-mail from Applebloom, one of the three founders of Stable-Tec, the third one was dated just a week after my hospitalisation and its subject was "New Stables and Product Listing" and the last one was just my month quota notice. The e-mail titled "New Stables and Product Listing": it had to be with the mention of new Stables. I opened the e-mail and after a brief introduction, the e-mail explained that two stables were to be constructed within the next couple of years, back then anyway. It said that Super Stable 24 (don't know what the "Super" part was supposed to mean) would be built under Las Pegasus itself and Stable 16, originally slated for Applewood was relocated to the hills outside of Las Pegasus.

I sighed with relief and sat back. Stable 16 didn't exist when I was alive. So thankfully I didn't sell anypony a place to that hell stable, but I felt for the poor pony that did.

"Stable-Tec hadn't built the stable by the time I was selling places to others," I told Fruity as I turned away from the computer. I looked at him in concern as he held his head. "Are you ok?"

"Hangover headache, nothing serious," He groaned.

"My mum suffered from bad headaches a lot, maybe the meds she was prescribed may help, although I don't know if they'll be any good now," I suggested.

"I'd try anything right now, Celestia's mercy I hate headaches," He groaned. "Where can I find them?" He asked.

"Mum kept them in her nightstand in her room," I answered as turned my terminal off.

"Err, you sure it's ok for me to go in there?"

"I don't think my mum's body is in there, I mean I haven't got that hint of rotten flesh from her room when I walked past it," I replied.

"Alright," The purple pegasus turned and left my room to go search for my mum's old headache pills.

I stood up from my desk and looked out the window, the sun was rising high into the sky now. It must be around ten or eleven in the morning, at least. I haven't done an all nighter since I was a teenager. Heh, memories. Turning from the window I felt an uncomfortable tightness around my right hind leg. I groaned and gently rubbed at my sock covered leg with a forehoof and was met with a smooth feeling underneath, not bumpy or disfigured like it was earlier. I quickly shoved the tip of my tail under the fabric and stretched the fabric a bit more so I could see the flesh and to my relief my leg had regenerated completely. Well, minus the fur. Oh Faust on a bike, the itchiness of the fur growing back would drive me insane.

"CRYSTAL, YOU BETTER COME LOOK AT THIS!" Fruity shouted from down the hall.

Fearing I was wrong and my mother's body was in her room, I galloped out of my room, jumped over the hole by the stairs and skidded through the door and to a stop inside my mother's room. I looked around frantically for a skeleton, but my mother's room looked as clean as a two hundred year old room could be after two centuries of deterioration. I found Fruity sat on the still made bed with the top drawer of the nightstand open, a small medical box in his lap but in his hooves he was holding a laminated card.

"What, what is?" I croaked from the near panic attack I had from his shout.

He turned the card around and showed it me.

The laminated card was an identification card for the Ministry of Awesome and it belonged to my mother and not only that but the card also had an administrator security clearance which I think was a highish clearance. But this didn't make any sense.

"You never told me your mother worked for the M.O.A," Fruity said, almost accusingly.

"That's because she was a baker," I shot back defensively.

"Are you sure?" He asked.

"Yea, she was always a baker," I answered in defence of my mother, the pony I loved the most in my life.

"Then what's this?"

"I don't know, I'm as confused as you are about this,"

"What if your mother being a baker was just a front for what she really was? I mean, the M.O.A specialised in espionage." He reasoned. I opened my mouth to rebuke his claim but his argument held water. I worked from home and couldn't really leave the house and to support me and herself, mother had to work long hours. I never questioned it until now so, maybe he's right, and maybe my mum was an agent for the M.O.A, not a spy but somepony working for them at least. I think I was going to dread going down this path to finding out the truth about me, just what would I uncover about my own family that not even I knew about?

XXXXX

"How are you feeling now?" I asked Fruity as we walked up Broadwalk Avenue in Hayside. It had been an hour since we left the house after our morning surprise. I decided to keep a hold of my mother's M.O.A ID card as it may prove useful to us, considering my endoskeleton was built by the M.O.A and all that.

"Much better now thanks, those pills worked a treat," He sighed happily now that his head wasn't pounding.

"That's good, um, do you remember where Motor Runner said we could find him?" I asked while looking around at the boarded up and mostly run down buildings lining the wide street as we walked up the road towards the Strip's gate.

"He said we could find him at the Golden Oak's Hotel," Fruity said and pointed off to the left. "Ah, there it is,"

I smiled; at least we weren't going to be wandering for hours trying to find this place. The building from the outside looked like a normal hotel like building with multiple windows on its face, most of which were cracked or had several panes broken. The building was also three stories tall and had an old neon sign bolted to the outside wall displaying the name of the building and hanging below the neon was a makeshift sign with painted on letters that read. "Bar and Casino Inside." We walked up to the door and with a nod from Fruity, I pushed open the door and stepped in.

The Golden Oak's Hotel looked like a rustic old Braytish pub that had parts of its interior converted for other means. To the left there was a stage set up for performers to put on shows for the patrons, to the right a dark wooden bar stood with stools lining the edge and the back wall had an opening to another room that lead into the back of the building. From the door, it looked like the backroom was used for gambling as I could see a blackjack table in there. There were a fair number of ponies sitting in chairs or on the stools by the bar, talking, drinking and going about their own business. It almost felt like I had gone back in time to a pre-war pub as the atmosphere in here just didn't feel as desperate or as lonely as outside.

"Who let a fucking Stripe in here?" Came a raspy voice from the wall next to the door.

I sighed at the use of the racial term fired my way and turned to chastise the pony but froze upon seeing who and what said it. The pony in question wore black leather armour and leaned against the wall in a bored fashion, but what caught my attention the most and what made my blood run cold with fear was that the pony's body, that was exposed that is, looked deteriorated and rotten in places, just like a ghoul.

"G-ghoul," I cried and jumped back, crashing into the wall beside the bar.

"What, never met a ghoul before?" The zombie like pony rasped in annoyance, the tone slightly higher in pitch, giving it a feminine tone to my ears.

"I'm sorry, my friend here is new to the wasteland, she's never met a sapient ghoul before, since we've met, we've only ran into ferals," Fruity explained while bowing his head in apology.

"Ugh, whatever," The ghoul sighed and returned to standing by the wall. "You better keep that Stripe under control, flyboy,"

"Don't worry Crystal, she's good, there are ghouls that are just like you and me. They just have the disadvantage of looking like a walking corpse," Fruity explained.

"I heard that," The female ghoul shouted in annoyance.

"Heh, sorry,"

I nodded my understanding and we trotted over to the bar and sat on a stool each, mine giving a loud echoing creak.

"Good afternoon, what can I get'cha?" A slightly rotund mare asked wearing an apron that looked like it could use a wash.

"Do you want a beer?" I asked Fruity.

"Oh goddesses no, my head can't take anymore alcohol," Fruity groaned.

"Um, two Sparkle-Colas please, err, if you have any that is,"

She nodded. "Coming right up,"

The round mare nodded and disappeared behind the bar for a moment before she popped back up with a bottle of the orange coloured liquid in her maw. She gently placed the bottle on the bar in front of me before repeating the process with the second.

"That's fifty caps please," She said while holding her hoof out. I nodded and paid the mare. "You two new in town? I don't recall ever seeing ya around before." She asked as she sat down.

"Yeah, we arrived a couple days ago," Fruity said while popping the cap off his cola and quickly shoving said cap into his pocket.

"It's always nice to meet new customers," The mare smiled. "It's rare we see a zebra in Hayside, glad to see you're not one of those Illustrious Moon lunatics,"

I nodded softly. "Um, do you know where we can find a pony called Motor Runner?" I asked the bartender.

The mare nodded. "That hunk is upstairs in his room but he should be coming down any time now. Why, do you have business with him?"

Fruity nodded to her question. "We do, we have a bounty to collect,"

"Are you two bounty hunters?" She asked conversationally.

"No, not really, but we needed the caps,"

"I see, so how did it go?"

"Ugh, it was terrible, we chased that asshole across a valley and into a stable in the hills," Fruity groaned.

The large main room seemed to go deadly silent all of a sudden.

"A stable, it wasn't Stable 16 was it?" She asked sounding scared.

"Um, yes," I answered slowly.

"How did you get out of there?" She asked in surprise, like our escape was impossible or something.

"We left after we dealt with our bounty, why?" Fruity asked a little uneasy.

"Countless prospectors have been to that stable over the years and hardly any ever returned, those that did, well..." She trailed off and pointed to a corner booth. We followed her pointing hoof and saw a young mare in her twenties with a middle aged stallion, she was holding his hoof and trying to get him to stop fidgeting so she could get him to drink something. The shaking stallion was also making odd gurgling cries or shouts every so often to which when he did a particular loud one the young mare would apologise.

"What happened to him?" I found myself unable to stop myself from asking.

"That stallion there is that mare's father and well, he went to loot Stable 16, like everypony else who hears about an untouched stable he goes in thinking he could make it big with the things he could salvage. He went in alone but came back to town after half the day had gone. He said the place was full of nothing but horrors and that the ponies inside were insane but..." She trailed off again looking grim as she told her tail. "The stallion suffered from nightmares since he escaped. His daughter said that his nightmares were so bad that he would stay up and do anything to keep himself awake and not only that, she said that he would act oddly at times, screaming and shouting at things that weren't even there, like he was hallucinating or something. Sadly all this took its toll on the stallion and he snapped, that quivering wreck is the result," She finished sadly. "How did you two get out of there ok?"

"I think we weren't in there long enough," I suggested. Since we left the stable I hadn't had another hallucination and despite us spending half a day in there, we were only exposed to the drug for a couple of hours since for most of our time in there, I was unconsciously above the danger zone. "Did you sleep ok?" I asked turning to Fruity.

"Like a foal on cloud nine," Fruity replied before taking a swig of his cola.

"You two were lucky, I hope the next pony to brave that place is just as lucky," The mare sighed.

"There won't be a next time," Fruity said, getting the mare's attention.

"He's right; we made sure no pony would ever be able to get in there again,"

"Yeah, we sealed the stable up tight, destroyed both its control panels with the door closed so nopony can access that death-trap."

"Really?"

"After the things we've seen in there, we couldn't let anypony else suffer the things we did, and seeing that poor stallion there with how it affected him and his family, I think we made the right choice in sealing it," I said.

"You have no idea the good you've done for us, no, the whole of the Marejave," She praised.

"The whole of the Marejave, really?" Fruity asked.

"Yea, stables are a prime prospecting spot for prospectors and salvagers, I can't imagine how many ponies that stable claimed over the years. What you two have done will save many lives in the future."

I smiled, feeling a warm fuzziness swell in my chest at the praise of doing something that could have helped save ponies of this community and possibly the entire Marejave. It felt good to hear that.

"Hmm yes, a commendable feat indeed," Motor Runner said from behind us.

"Gah, will ponies stop sneaking up on me please," I whined as I jumped forward from the unexpected voice that came from behind me, making me nearly knock over my bottle of cola in the process.

Fruity snickered before bursting into laughter. "Twice in one day, haha, ohh, how many more times are you going to jump at something coming up behind ya?" Fruity asked through a fit of giggles.

I glared at my laughing friend and flicked my tail to the side and whipped him in the ribs gently, which made him yelp in surprise.

"Alright, alright, sorry," He moaned as he rubbed at his stinging ribs.

"Are you two done?" Motor Runner asked softly.

"I'm sorry yes," I said before composing myself and turned to face the Princess Celestia sized stallion. "We took care of your... err, loose end," I said while feeling just a tad intimidated as he looked down on us and I used my tail to pull the pendant out from my duster pocket and held it up to him. The huge stallion leant down and scrutinized the pendant for a long minute before standing back up straight.

"Excellent work Miss Éclair and Mr Fruity, with that stallion out of the way, foals can sleep well at night," He said with a smile. "And now I don't have to worry about him revealing Project-K to anypony," He murmured to himself quietly but my sensitive audio receptors picked it up. I was going to ask what Project-K was but decided against it; it was none of my business after all. The large stallion then reached around and pulled a pair of saddlebags off his back and placed them down on the bar before us. "The caps as promised, and as a bonus you can keep the pendant, I'm sure it could be worth a few caps as well,"

The door to the hotel opened and a young pegasus stallion in a stripped down version of the Enclave power armour stepped in and looked around before his gaze fell upon the large stallion. I saw Fruity tense up at the sight of the power armoured pegasus.

"Motor Runner sir, I brought your carriage as requested," The pegasus said, addressing the large stallion as his superior.

The large stallion sighed. "Wirbelwind, how many times do I have to tell you, you don't have to call me sir."

"Every time sir,"

Motor Runner sighed. "One of these days, you'll know the difference between friend and commanding officer," He then turned to us. "Thank you for taking care of my problem but I am needed back home, I hope you have a pleasant journey," And with that he followed his pegasus companion out the hotel.

"He's kidding right, pleasant journey?" Fruity gave a mirthless laugh. "No such thing."

"The train wasn't so bad," I absentmindedly said while taking out small pouches of caps from the saddlebags Motor Runner put on the bar top. I found that one bag had two pouches of a thousand caps each in, and the other had three, giving us the five thousand as he said he would. I smiled and pocketed three of the pouches while also giving Fruity the other two.

"The train blew up..." Fruity reminded me.

"Oh, yeah..."

Fruity put his caps into his magic duster pockets and then held the black fabric saddlebags up. "Hmm, I could use these," He said to himself before putting the saddlebags onto his back behind his wings.

We stayed at the bar for a few more minutes while we had our colas and then headed back out into Hayside. The sun shone down on us from up high, and after leaving the cool interior of the hotel, we were assaulted by its tremendous Marejave heat. Thankfully I was used to the heat, but poor Fruity wasn't.

"Bloody Nora, I feel like a cooked chicken," He moaned as we began up the road towards the gate.

"A bit of sun is good for you," I smiled.

Fruity extended a wing and began to fan himself. "But this much sun feels like I'm being roasted,"

I giggled softly; it would probably take him a few months to properly adjust to this climate after living in the cold wet conditions of the east for so long.

As the gate came into view, we found a small group of stallions lingering on the road. Each one looked like an average Haysider, but the drawn melee weapons ranging from knifes to pool cues gave us a bad impression. I began to grow a little uneasy seeing the threatening looking group up ahead; I really didn't like the look of them.

"Maybe we should take a side road and go around," I suggested.

Fruity nodded his agreement and we, as casually as possible as to not attract attention, took the nearest left and began to walk down an unoccupied road. Unfortunately, the path we took added to my unease as the street we travelled down looked more beat up and was filled with more rubble along either side against the buildings than most of what we've currently seen in Hayside. It was almost like no pony had even been down this street in years. We followed the road around until it began to lead us back towards the main road, but stopped as soon as we turned the corner that would put us on the road back to the main street. The group of five ponies had moved into the street and all five of them were facing us, like they were waiting for us. Slowly, we backed up and turned around but froze again as behind us was another group of three that had quietly crept up on us, trapping us in this out of the way street. I got the feeling this was intentional.

"Shit," Fruity sighed. "Looks like we're going to have to fight our way out,"

Sadly I nodded in agreement since both ways out of the secluded street were blocked.

"Looks like you wandered into the wrong street lady," One of the stallions jeered at me.

"Shame we have to hurt that pretty face of yours," Another added.

Fruity flapped his wings and took to the air and took hold of his Q-Modulator in his hooves and turned to aim at the three ponies behind us. "I got the rear," He said while charging up the plasma weapon.

"Get'em," Shouted one of the stallions and all eight Haysider thugs began to charge at us with their melee weapons out at the ready.

I acted quickly. I bent down and grabbed my black and gold gilded revolver before slipping into SATS. Under the effects of the Pipbuck’s targeting spell, time slowed down to a crawl. This allowed me to carefully pick my shots, but I had to act quickly since they were still moving towards me. I toggled a headshot on the first thug then moved to the next one and toggled another head shot and did the same on a third but I couldn't go any further as I didn't have enough action points left in the spell to get a forth shot lined up with Lucky 13. With my three shots selected, I disengaged the spell and time resumed back to normal pace and under the influence of the targeting spell, I automatically aimed at my first targeted attacker and fired, changed trajectory to aim at the second and fired again then changed trajectory again and fired on the third in the space of a few seconds. I was briefly surprised for a moment when three of the five thugs dropped to the floor, felled by the powerful .357 magnum rounds from Lucky 13.

"Oh shit,"

"The boss never said she was good with a gun," I heard one of the stallions cry out. Did I hear right? These ponies were sent to kill me. Were they connected with that robot from earlier?

"Quick, she's distracted,"

Shit!

A thug with a switchblade came at me followed by another with a pool cue. My threat detector lit up like a hearth's warming tree as both ponies attempted to hit me simultaneously. Jabbing and slashing with the blade and long swings with the pool cue. Thankfully I was able to react to my threat warning fast enough to dodge the incoming attacks.

"Having fun?" Fruity asked as he fired his rifle.

"A blast," I dead panned, feeling annoyed to high heaven with these thugs.

Fruity gave another mirthless laugh as he flew back over to his group of attackers. I dodged back from a jab from the switchblade pony and gave myself some breathing room. The pony with the blade looked like he was getting really pissed off at my constant dodging.

"Why can't we hit this bitch?" He growled around the hilt of his blade. In a fit of rage he charged at me. I rolled my eyes because the charge was just so simple and easy to avoid, it was pathetic that he would even attempt it. I simply stepped to the side as he thrust his neck out to stab at me while during his charge, so as I dodged he fell to the floor as I wasn't there for him to crash into with his blade. As the stallion landed on his chest he let out a slightly pained cry and dropped his switchblade.

"Why are you even attacking me?" I asked him as I turned my attention to the stallion on the floor. Unfortunately, that was a mistake, as with my attention now off the other thug, I had left myself open to attack and I didn't react to my threat warning in time. A sharp pain erupted from the back of my head making me cry out, more in surprise than actual pain, which was followed by the sound of splintering wood. I felt my stetson get knocked off my head as a result of the impact while I also dropped my revolver. I hissed with the pain as I looked up at the stallion now holding and staring at what remained of his pool cue. Rubbing the back of my head with a forehoof I growled in annoyance. "That hurt,"

"What the fuck?!" The pool cue pony shrieked.

The thug on the floor began to pick himself back up but I quickly put a forehoof down onto his back. "I don't think so," I growled before turning my gaze back to the still stunned stallion with the stump of a pool cue. "Have your friend back," I said before gripping the stallion's jacket and used my mechanical strength and hauled him off the floor and flung him at his companion. The stallion yipped in surprise before two pairs of voices cried out in pain as two stallions collided with each other and went tumbling backwards in a tangle of limbs.

"What the fuck is she?" One of the two moaned out in a daze.

"No zebra should be that strong," The other added as they tried to recover.

While the two stallions tried to free themselves from each other I picked up my hat and put it back on as well as my revolver and holstered it. I needed answers and I had an idea as to how to intimidate them into telling me. I used my tail to scoop up the dropped switchblade as I advanced on the two ponies.

"Who sent you and did he send a robot after me earlier?" I demanded.

"Like we'd tell you,"

"We don't know shit about a robot,"

I brought the switch blade to my face just as Fruity landed on his hind legs beside me. "I've dealt with the three tossers behind us, they're all pools of green gravy now," I nodded in acknowledgement while keeping my gaze on the two ponies before us. Fruity raised the Q-Modulator while gently pumping his wings to keep himself balanced. The two thugs had their eyes focused on the blade, probably expecting me to try using it to torture the information out of them but I had a different idea in mind. I opened my maw and to all three ponies’ surprise, stuck the blade up to the hilt into my mouth and promptly bit down on the blade. The magic in my mouth acted quickly and with a soft snap the blade broke free from the rest of the switchblade which made the two thugs gasp. I felt the blade soften and turn into a chewy substance in my mouth with a spearmint aftertaste as I swallowed it.

"Now, who sent you?" I demanded.

"He'd kill us if we told you," The pony that had the pool cue whimpered.

"Bollocks, we'll kill you for attacking us,"

"No, we won't, killing them like this won't solve anything," I sighed and gave the half eaten switchblade back to its owner. "Go back to your employer and tell him, if he wants me dead, he better come do it himself," With that the two stallions quickly untangled themselves and galloped off as fast as they could go.

"I'm not paid enough for this shit," I heard one of them yell as he ran.

"Yea, the job description didn't say shit about freaky strong zebras that can eat metal," The other replied sounding disturbed.

"Was that necessary?" Fruity asked as I licked my lips.

"It worked to scare them didn't it?"

Fruity shrugged as he slung his rifle and returned to all fours. "Let's get to the gate before anymore assholes decide they want to fuck about with us,"

"I am so not in the mood for anymore more assholes," I agreed and we resumed our walk to the gate to New Pegasus. "If they weren't with the pony that sent that robot then why were they out to kill us, what have we done to piss somepony off enough to want us dead?" I asked, unable to fathom any possible reason for a pony to want to kill us since we had only just arrived two days ago.

"This is the wasteland Crystal, these days ponies will likely just shoot at you if you so much as look at them funny," He sighed. "Hell, I've had countless ponies want to kill me over the years and some of the dumbest reasons I've ever heard include, because I'm purple and because I'm a pegasus,"

"That's pathetic,"

"I know, but that's what it's like these days if you meet the wrong type of pony or owt like that,"

I sighed and shook my head. We continued on in relative silence as we recovered from our encounter and didn't have anything better to talk about in that moment. It took us about five minutes from then to reach the gate guarded by sentry drones and like the first time, one of them rolled in front of us to block our path.

"Halt, submit to a credit check or present your passport before proceeding to the gate," It repeated like before. "Trespassers will be shot,"

I stepped up to the hulking robot. "I submit to a credit check," I announced with a hint of nervousness in my voice as being this close to the large robot was very intimidating.

The large robot's head gazed at me for a while before it beeped. "Thank you madam, you may proceed,"

"I'm with her," Fruity said but the machines didn't seem to react, even as he stepped up beside me they just ignored him.

Cautiously, we proceeded towards the gate, but thankfully, the robot guards didn't react to Fruity being with me as he hadn't been subjected to a credit check. I supposed since he was my companion and that it was me that was checked he was allowed in with me.

We found a small door in the huge gate to walk through so we didn't have to pull the huge ass gate open and pushed it open and stepped through. Again it felt like I went back in time as the scene on the other side of the gate didn't match up with what Hayside was like. Everything looked near to pristine and clean.

"WOW!" Fruity chirped as we stepped into New Pegasus proper.

"It's still a beautiful city even after two hundred years," I smiled while looking over the mostly intact buildings and how clean they all looked. New Pegasus was the complete opposite of Manehattan which was run down and nearly dead. New Pegaus was nearly as bright and lively as it was back before the bomb.

From the gate we could see that Broadwalk Avenue made up the Strip continued onward and curled to the right up ahead. The Strip is where the main casinos and hotels stood in Las Pegasus and once brought in a great deal of tourists and revenue. I was glad to see that some of the old iconic hotels and casinos still stood as from the gate I could still see the "Planet Applewood Hotel & Casino" because I could still see the old Prench Tower standing tall. At the start of the bend in the road I could see a miniature but badly damaged towards the top replica of a selection of Manehattan buildings and standing out in front of it all was a smaller replica of the Statue of Friendship, this was the "Manehattan Experience Hotel & Casino". There were a bunch of other hotels and casinos that I recognised and felt grateful that they had survived, despite the upper floors looking worse for wear with some having gaping holes in them but close to the gate there was a hotel and casino that I don't remember being on the Strip before I died. On the left side of the road behind a beautiful marble archway stood a replica of the main building of Canterlot Castle and it looked newer than the other buildings here on the Strip. While looking over the beautiful white spires I soon found its neon sign on the archway and the building is known as the "Canterlot Royal Hotel & Casino".

"Oh!" I said suddenly as it finally clicked in my brain.

"What?" Fruity asked in surprise, my little sudden chirp caught him off guard as his wings had flared out.

I pointed to the castle like hotel. "I just remembered why that place looks newer than the rest; they began building it shortly after I was admitted to hospital,"

"Oh, err, cool,"

"Wow, there are far more ponies here than in Hayside," I commented as I noticed the large number of ponies walking the Strip and popping in and out of the hotels while going about their lives.

"Yeah, I've never seen a ground city so populated before, it’s kinda scary to be honest," Fruity said as we began to walk up the road. "So, where too?"

"Well, we'll need to take our first available right, the hospital is somewhere down that way," I said while pointing to our right to indicate the direction we would need to go.

"Whoa, an alicorn," Fruity suddenly gasped. I had learned about alicorns from Fruity on the way here to the Marejave on the train so I knew that an alicorn wasn't one of our goddesses and were simply the result of an experiment gone wrong and were usually deadly. However the purple alicorn we could see standing in the doorway of the Canterlot Royal Hotel didn't give us the impression of a deadly super powered mutant but more of a high class mare. The alicorn was dressed in a lovely white formal dress that a long skirt to completely cover her flanks and long slender hind legs. She was also smiling which was something Fruity said they didn't do, unless it was a sinister grin for when they had you, but the smile she was giving was a soft friendly smile and it was being directed to a cream coloured unicorn mare with a purple mane done up into a short ponytail before her that was dressed in a worn lab coat.

"That unicorn looks vaguely familiar," I muttered to myself. I honestly couldn't say I recognised her but something about the mare was making me feel weird, like I should know her. I shook my head to clear it of the weird feeling as we approached an intersection next to a hotel that had been renamed from "Lunar Paradise Hotel & Casino" to simply, "Sinful Moon". The dancing mares in skimpy clothing along with the name Sinful gave me an impression of what the place had been repurposed to and it made me blush.

"C'mon Fruity," I said hurriedly as I wrapped my tail around his foreleg and began to drag him along behind me as like any stallion he stopped to have a good gander at the dancing mares.

XXXXX

"Ah, it's wonderful to see you this lovely afternoon Dr Pear," The large purple alicorn smiled down at the unicorn at the door to her hotel.

"Likewise Duchess, I'm here for monthly check up," Dr Pear said with a friendly smile.

"It's been ten years since I had any lapse but it's always good to see you my friend,"

Dr Pear giggled softly. "Even so, I would still like to perform the check to be sure; I'd hate to lose a good friend like..." The cream unicorn stopped and wore a puzzled expression for a moment before she turned her head slowly to the side so she could see behind herself. "It can't be," She mentally said to herself as she noticed a grey striped zebra mare wearing a duster and a black stetson walking up the road with a purple pegasus stallion close behind. An odd sense of familiarity seemed to emanate from the zebra mare.

"Dr Pear, are you alright?" Duchess asked with worry.

The unicorn quickly snapped out of her thoughts and returned her attention to her alicorn friend. "Yes, sorry, thought I recognised somepony for a moment there, ahem, shall we?" She smiled.

"Of course, right this way," The alicorn beckoned with a welcoming smile.

XXXXX

“Thank you, I thought I’d be there all day,” Fruity said thankfully after I let go of his foreleg from my tail’s grip.

I giggled. “Stallions,” I smiled as we turned onto a street that would take us towards the hospital. As we walked a growing sense of itchiness was beginning to crawl up my right hind leg. That could mean only one thing; the fur was starting to grow back in. I hope to the goddesses the itchiness wasn’t as strong as what was on my cheek.

The buildings grew less flashing and extravagant as we moved away from the strip, the hotels mixing with flashy and expensive restaurants until finally giving way to low budget hotels and restaurants that looked more like normal buildings with just a sign. However, as we came to the end of the hotels and restaurants, we found a chain link fence with a gate cutting across the road and standing beside the gate was a stallion wearing a pre-war police uniform complete with hat and police baton.

“Only residents are allowed beyond this point,” The police pony said as we approached the gate.

“Aww what,” Fruity whined.

“I’m sorry, there have been too many complaints regarding visitors harassing the locals, so visitors to New Pegasus are not allowed into the residential district here,”

I stepped forward. “Please sir, my friend and I won’t be any trouble; we didn’t come to New Pegasus to go to the casinos or the hotels, our destination lies beyond this gate,”

The police pony tilted his head with a raised eyebrow. “And where would that be?”

“The Fluttershy Hospital sir,” I turned to look at Fruity and quietly asked “Shall I give him the truth?”

“No, he doesn’t need to know, tell him what you told me at first,” He replied just as quietly.

I subtly nodded. “I’m trying to track down my ancestors and my last lead directed me to the Fluttershy Hospital here in New Pegasus.”

“Hmm,” The stallion looked up at the afternoon sun. “My shift is nearly over, I’ll tell you what, when the next shift arrives I’ll escort you two to the hospital and only if you’ll allow me to confiscate your weapons while we are in the residential district,”

“That sounds reasonable,” I agreed.

“Sure,”

“Ok then,” The police pony said. “What are your names and welcome to New Pegasus,”

“My name is Crystal Éclair,” The police stallion raised an eyebrow at my name. “I know, odd name for a zebra, my parents were weird,”

The stallion chuckled lightly. “It’s not the worst I’ve heard,”

“I’m Tooty Fruity,” Fruity announced as he unslung his rifle and placed it on the ground. “Don’t you dare scratch this thing, it was a ballache putting it back together again after yesterday,”

“And please take care of this, it was gifted to me,” I said as I pulled out Lucky 13 and hoofed it over.

“Wow that’s nice,” He commented as he took my revolver and put it on his belt and then slung Fruity’s Q-Modulator over his neck. We had to wait for about fifteen minutes before the next shift arrived and once he did, the police stallion opened the gate and beckoned us to follow closely and not to wander off, or else we’d get arrested.

The residential district mostly consisted of converted office buildings that had been repurposed for living in. There wasn’t anywhere near the number of ponies in the streets as on the strip but that was to be expected as this was a private area of the city for the residents. I felt a little nervous as we followed the police pony. A lot of the ponies that were out were staring at me. I suppose they are either untrusting of a zebra or just not used to seeing one but either way it was unsettling to have so many pairs of eyes on me.

“STOP RIGHT THERE!” Came a shout from down an alleyway. All three of us turned to the source of the shout and suddenly a unicorn mare dressed in rags and looked filthy burst out of the alley with a small sack in her mouth that jingled as she ran. She immediately swerved to avoid us and lit up her horn. A ponyhole cover in the middle of the street up ahead lifted into the air and the mare dived down the hole before the ponyhole cover dropped back down with a clang.

“What just happened?” Fruity asked surprised.

Suddenly an out of breath police mare stumbled out of the alley the rag wearing mare came out of, huffing and panting like she had run a marathon. “Ugh, did you see that street rat come by here?” She panted.

“You missed her PC Reading, she dived into the sewers,” The police stallion leading us told the police mare.

“Again, how the fuck do these low lives keep finding a way in here? They’re just as tenacious as radroaches.” She grumbled. “I’m gonna have to tell Sergeant Bullhorn we have another ponyhole to seal up,” PC Reading then turned the opposite way and began to walk off while grumbling about the escaped pony.

“What was that all about?” I asked as we resumed our trek to the hospital.

“For the last few years we’ve had ponies sneaking into the New Pegasus, it didn’t matter which area, but they always snuck in and stole caps and food from ponies and their homes or businesses and before we could catch them they would disappear. The times we came close is when we saw them dive into the sewers,”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to just seal all the ponyholes?” Fruity asked.

“The sewer system here is still functional so we need to keep some access so we can maintain it so we cann’t seal them all, but if we can find the ones they are using that aren’t essential to keeping to the operation of the sewers, we can seal those ones like the one Reading will soon have sealed,”

“Sounds like a pain in the ass,” I commented.

“You have no idea,” The police stallion sighed.

Soon, our trek through the residential sector brought us to our destination. Finally, I was now only moments away from some answers. My heart began to thump in my chest with the anticipation of what I might find out. The building itself looked almost like how I remembered it, yellow with pink highlights with a massive pink cross that had Fluttershy’s cutie mark on top of it above the door.

“I’ll wait outside for you; please don’t take too long,”

I nodded and Fruity and I entered the old hospital. The lobby was pretty clean and well maintained. The walls were white with little grime and decorated with faded pictures of the once timid ministry mare Fluttershy in situations of helping ponies or even animals in need. At the back of the lobby was a large mahogany desk with several ponies sat behind it as the hospitals receptionists.

“Well, here goes,” I said softly and approached the desk.

One of the receptionists looked up and balked for a moment upon seeing me. “Oh um, good afternoon, err, welcome to the New Pegasus Fluttershy Hosptial, how may I help you?” She asked with wide eyes as she stared at me, most likely never having seen a zebra like me before.

“Good afternoon, I’m trying to find out about my ancestors and the last thing I found about them was that they had been treated here before the bombs fell so I was wondering if I could see the pre-war patient records,” I said with a soft smile while fighting to keep my face straight as the itchy sensation burning in my leg was growing stronger.

“Err, can we even give civilians access to pre-war records?” The receptionist asked one of her colleagues.

“I don’t know, I think you’ll have to ask Dr Flask,”

The receptionist sighed and looked back to me. “I’m sorry ma’am; can you give me a moment while I find out?”

I nodded softly.

“Thank you,” She said with a smile as she picked up a broadcaster with her hoof. “Dr Flask?” There was a buzz and a male voice drifted up from the broadcaster.

“Yes?” The voice asked.

“It’s Lucy from reception; we have a zebra mare here wanting to see pre-war patient records, are we allowed to give her access?”

“Hang on, I’ll be right there, I’m just around the corner,” And with that the broadcaster went silent and shortly afterwards a stallion dressed in a lab coat with the Ministry of Peace insignia on the sleeve walked through a door to our right. “I was on my way back to me office when you called, hmm, are you the zebra mare wanting to see patient records?” He asked while looking at me.

“No she just left,” Fruity said sarcastically.

“Funny, ok, why do you want to see the patient records?” He demanded.

“You see sir, I’m trying to find out about my ancestors and here is where they were last, their records could help me find out more about my family,” I explained while trying to sound as sincere as possible. “It’s very important to me,”

“Hmm, very well, please follow me to my office,” He said and turned around and began to walk. We followed close and he led us down a couple of corridors until we came to a small office which looked similar to the sort of room a general practice doctor would check a patient in. Dr Flask sat behind his desk and his terminal.

“Please, sit and who is it that you wish to know about?” He asked.

“Crystal Éclair,” I answered. It sounded weird to ask to check for me own name.

“Hmm, Crystal, Crystal, Crystal, ah, here we go, Crystal Éclair, born January eighth, ten oh five AN (08/01/1005 After Nightmare) in the Crystal Empire. She was a Crystal Pony that moved to Las Pegasus at age five with her family but sadly she died in this hospital due to her lifelong illnesses on October twenty third ten LR (23/10/0010 Luna Reign)”

I sighed with a frown. It sounded bad to know that I had been officially declared dead when I wasn’t but... I turned to Fruity.

“I’m going to tell him the truth Fruity; I need to know the truth,”

“Ok Crys,”

“The truth, what are you talking about?” The doctor asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Doctor, my name is Crystal Éclair; I woke up from stasis sleep over a week ago in Manehattan like this. I’m trying to understand what happened to me and the last thing I remember before I woke up there is being in this hospital on my deathbed,”

“Usually, I would call you nuts and have you thrown out… But you just said Manehattan and stasis together in the same sentence, which gives me reason to actually believe you,” Dr Flask said with an astonished voice.

“Wow, really?” Fruity and I both asked in unison and surprise, I was expecting this to be a difficult conversation of trying to convince him.

“It says here that Crystal signed a concession form granting the Ministry of Awesome possession of her body. She died hours after signing the form and the M.O.A gave instructions in the contract for the body to be placed in stasis. The following morning it says the M.O.A arrived to take the body to Manehattan,”

“I didn’t sign a concession form from the M.O.A they nev...” I stopped mid sentence as the memory of the odd Ministry of Peace scientist popped into my head. “Did a Ministry of Peace scientist visit me at all, like ever?”

Dr Flask leaned close to his terminal as he scrutinized his data before pulling back and shaking his head. “I’m afraid not, the only visitors you had beside the M.O.A were family,”

“Then who was my last visitor?” I shrieked with anger.

“Colonel Ironside of the M.O.A was your last visitor; he was the pony that also submitted the concession form to the hospital staff back then,”

I can’t believe this, I was lied to. I was tricked into signing my body over to the M.O.A and for what, to be turned into this bio-mechanical monstrosity? I let out a scream of frustration. “Those bastards, they took my body to make me into this, and for what?” I roared.

“I’m sorry, there is no mention as to what your body was used for,”

“Of course there isn’t, this is the M.O.A, the shadiest fuckers around,” Fruity sighed.

“Where was my body taken again?” I demanded with an angry growl.

“Paradigm Cybernetics in Manehattan to be specific,” Dr Flask answered.

“You gotta be shitting me,” Fruity whined.

“Is there a problem?”

“We are back to square one, we came from Manehattan to get here, only to find out we have to go all the way fucking back?” I cried out in annoyance.

“I’m sorry,” Dr Flask said softly before pulling out a carton of lollipops. “Lollipop?”

I sighed with annoyance while taking a lollipop with my tail and used a forehoof to scratch at my now itchy hind leg.

XXXXX

The previous evening outside of Stable 16.

I-02 IS found himself trapped against the cold steel of the large steel door of Stable 16. He had missed his target and fallen into their trap, although he fell over before the door so he didn’t go through the it like they had intended him to do but with how he had fallen over, his AM Rifle had wound up in one of the grooves for the stable door’s cog teeth.

The purple pegasus stepped up behind him as he struggled to pull himself free, but the military grade straps on his battlesaddle held tight and he couldn’t run the risk of tearing his armour apart to get free as he would be exposed completely. Suddenly, an energy warning flashed into his HUD and he turned his head to look at the pegasus as he held a glowing object. The machine’s optical units were able to see through the glare of the glow and could see a damaged Micro Mana Cell, which due to the damage had been rendered unstable and was ready to blow.

“Here, have a blast,” The pegasus stallion said as he dropped the cell at I-02 IS’s back and quickly fled with his target.

The energy spiked as the cell hit the floor and the machine redoubled his efforts to try and pull free of the stable door but the squashed AM Rifle’s reinforced barrel wasn’t going to break anytime soon and neither were the straps of his battlesaddle. His only option was to destroy his riot armour using his mechanical strength to get free, but the spiking energy told him he didn’t have the time to escape the blast. A sense of self-preservation kicked in and he began to strain against his straps, however it was too late. There was an ear splitting explosion of magical energy as the MMC finally detonated. The nearby control panel, overloaded with energy from the blast exploded in a shower of sparks, forever sealing the stable. I-02 IS was shoved against the stable door as wave upon wave of magical energy coursed through his mechanical body. The waves of energy set the straps and his trench coat aflame while they continued to pass through his body and into his internal components. I-02 IS’s neural processor wasn’t spared from the onslaught of magic, and the sensitive unit was quickly being overwhelmed with energy.

“WARNING! WARNING! MAGIC OVERLOAD! EMERGY SHUTDOWN INITIATED!”

The light faded in his eyes and he slumped to the floor as the blast of magic faded. I-02 IS lay in charred riot armour as the trench coat had burned off and the straps holding the AM rifle to the battlesaddle had snapped from being burned, freeing him but now he lay deactive on the floor.

The following morning over at the Marejave Production Facility.

The computer grumbled in annoyance, despite the cave proving to disrupt his connection with I-02 IS, he however had witnessed his downfall as well as knowing that the machine had shut itself down. But that had been many hours ago.

“I knew sending a blank unit was a bad idea, but considering the circumstances I didn’t have much choice,” He mumbled to him as he materialised his wireframe face on the main screen and looked up to a window in the top right that was displaying the video feed from an internal security camera. The camera was looking into the vast cavernous Mark 2 Vault.

“Damn you Dr Pear, you traitorous wench,” He growled with unbridled anger for the pony that had betrayed him over a hundred and fifty years ago.

*Beep*

“Unit 1002 connection re-established,” An automated response sounded off.

“About bloody time,” The computer pony sighed as he reached out to the connection with his supposed vessel. “I-02 IS report,” He demanded impatiently.

He waited for a few seconds and after no response he tried again but again silence followed. Growling with annoyance yelled out. “Unit 1002 report damn it,”

“Unit 1002 active,” The machine responded but the voice sounded unsure.

The wireframe stallion blinked hearing the uncertainty in the machine’s voice. Something wasn’t right with the machine. He brought up a remote diagnostic so he could scan the machine through the remote access link but was puzzled when the checks were coming back positive. That changed however when the diagnostic scanned I-02 IS’s neural processor. What had once been a linear thought pattern for a machine was now erratic and spontaneous like that of an organic brain. The energy surge that had overloaded the machine had an unexpected effect, an effect that was yet to cause an actual effect on the operation of the machine but with the way the thought patterns were now moving it indicated that the machine may now be capable of free thinking. Further observation was needed to determine if that was true or not but the computer decided he may need to come up with a backup plan in case the change was not to his liking.

“Unit 1002, memory status,” He ordered.

“Memory purged due to overload,”

“That explains the no response its name that I gave it,” He sighed. “Stand by for data transfer,”

The computer had made copies of I-02 IS’s memory just in case there was a situation that resulted in the machine being destroyed and for any valuable data it had learned that could be then passed onto a replacement Infiltrator if he could ever regain access to the Vault. It was a simple process of sending a backed up copy back over to I-02 IS and the machine was back to its previous state before the MMC detonation despite the unusual neural activity in its processor.

“I like the name Nexus,” It suddenly said moments after the transfer, which took the computer by surprise.

“You do, do you?” He asked, not sure what to make of that.

“With permission sir, may I go by that name?” He asked, showing desire.

The computer contemplated his machine’s request for a moment but decided to let him have his chosen name and ordered him to resume his mission. He needed time to think on what this could mean with the change to Nexus’s neural processor and he felt now more than ever he needed to find a way to regain his connectivity to the Mark 2 Vault. There are nine hundred and ninety nine standard mark two units in there that are fully programmed and capable just waiting to be activated, even his masterpiece was in there but he needed to regain control. The change to I-02 IS was an indicator that it was now or never for his Mark 2s.


Some image goodies for you.


The Reveal by Vector-Brony


Rifle Maintenance by Slouping


Paradigm Cybernetics by Slouping

Chapter 9: A New Perspective

View Online

(Author notes: Minor missing words added and dialogue in dream and electronic voice sections put into italics as well as new bonus pictures added)

Fallout Equestria: Influx

Chapter 9: A New Perspective


We stepped onto the makeshift platform of what used to be the Las Pegasus Train Depot, which was now being used as the New Pegasus Train Station. I sighed with disappointed at a wasted journey as I sat down on the wooden platform, the boards creaked under my weight. I couldn’t believe we went all the way out here just to find out we had to go all the way back to where we started. It was frustrating to have gone through everything we had for nothing.

“Shouldn’t there be a pony here to help passengers?” Fruity asked as he used his wings to position his Q-Modulator between his wings to sit squarely on his back.

“Usually I’m on the train when it’s in motion rather being the station master, plus the station isn’t open…what are you doing... don’t I know you?” A recognisable voice said to our right.

“Marshal?” I asked as I turned to look at the stallion that had gifted me his revolver as he stepped out from behind a concrete pillar.

The slate coloured stallion tilted his head as he looked at me. I quickly took my stetson off and his eyes widened in surprise and recognition. “Well I’ll be damned, Crystal Éclair, you’re alive!” He then looked to Fruity who had also taken his steston off as well. “Ah yes, you’re Fruity, thought you looked familiar as well.”

“Good to see that you survived the explosion of the train too,” Fruity said with a nod.

“Thank you and what are two doing here? The station is closed.” He asked as he approached us.

“A member of the Queens directed us here and the gate was open so we came in. We wanted to find out when the train will be ready to go again,” I said, standing back up.

“Ah, the train...” He said, trailing off as he looked over the train yard. We followed his gaze to a train of Pullmare cars that we all recognised as the train we rode here on. “The track is cleared and repaired and the train cars have been recovered, but the bosses of the Trans-Equestrian Railway don’t want a repeat of what happened to that streamlined locomotive, so they’re doing extra safety checks with the “Dashing Pegasus” to make sure the locomotive will be perfectly operational before they put it back into service,” Marshal Slate explained.

“So the train won’t be ready for a while yet?” Fruity deadpanned.

The marshal shook his head. “I’m afraid not. The “Dashing Pegasus” is being tested very thoroughly; it’s more of a priceless icon to Equestrian and Braytish Imperial history than the other one, so they don’t want to lose it to a valve malfunction.”

“So, how long are we looking at here?” I asked with a sigh.

“The tests are scheduled to continue for the next couple of days before normal train service is resumed,”

Great, we had to waste our time for a couple of days while we wait for the engineers to be satisfied with the train. I grumbled with annoyance. I was then shocked out of my foul mood by a loud steam whistle. Looking over to the engine sheds we saw a cloud of steam flowing out of one of the open engine bays.

Out of the cloud of steam came a large, if somewhat grimy, cyan blue coloured steam locomotive that was similar in appearance to the streamlined one from before, but wasn’t streamlined into the shape of a wing at the front. It had the same wheel configuration and eight wheel corridor tender but that was where its visual similarities ended. It had exposed wheels, letting us see the three drive wheels on the side we could see all its intricate drive and valve gear linking up to them. The cylinder sat just in front of the first drive wheel. Above the drive wheels was a hoofplate that the large boiler sat on. The first few feet of the boiler were actually the smoke box and were coloured black and had a pipe that went down into the cylinder. Where the smoke box ended, the boiler started, it was perfect cylindrical in shape for about half the length before it tapered out, rising up a little before tapering back down slightly before it joined with the cab. Above each drive wheel was a small wheel arch and above the middle arch was a nameplate that followed the slight curve and on that plate was the name of the locomotive, the “Dashing Pegasus”.

“Whoa,” Fruity said as we watched the large iron horse (I remember my father calling steam engines Iron Horses) puff its way out of its shed and into the bright Marejave sun.

We watched for a while as the large steam engine puffed up the track. As it moved, a memory came to the surface of my mind as I recognised that engine.

It was a mild morning in the Marejave as my parents and I waited on the platform for our train. I was around seven years old at the time and we were waiting for the train to take us to the Crystal Empire for our Hearth’s Warming Holiday as we usually spent the holidays at my grandparents. Today was also special as a brand new passenger locomotive had been put into service under the Equestrian Railway. Apparently, it was a joined effort with Braytish and Equestrian engineers and they created a new class of passenger locomotive that could haul large trains at high speeds which would be great for passenger services. The one that was to pull our train was named the “Dashing Pegasus”.

I remember the station platform being incredibly crowded that morning, many ponies waiting for the train but also lots of reporters trying to get a scoop on the new locomotive. I felt slightly intimidated by such a crowd, never having been around so many ponies before in my life. I had hugged close to my mother’s pink legs when I was scared out of my skin by an incredibly loud whistle. It was at that moment that a giant blue monster ground past us. My first encounter with the locomotive was scary as the engine was massive, easily twice the size of the previous steam engine and when it arrived, it was squealing loudly as it had its breaks on as it ground to a halt. There was then a commotion as the reporters went into a frenzy fighting over each other for the best photo of the new locomotive while passengers disembarked and new passengers tried to board. It was chaos worthy of the chaos master himself. It was as we were boarding that we looked down the length of the train and noticed just how long it was. The rest of the train extended out of the train terminal and around the curve that was outside. The previous locomotive that took us to the Empire was a four to five car train; this one was ten or more car train. No wonder ponies were flipping out over this new engine.

“-days and everything should be good to go.” I heard Slate say. I blinked in confusion as I missed the start of his statement due to my memory.

“Sure no probs,” Fruity said as he nudged me. “C’mon, we better go,”

“Err, right, um, see you soon Mr Slate,” I called to the stallion as I followed Fruity off the premises.

XXXXX

“What should we do now?” Fruity asked as we walked back through the gate into Hayside as the sun began its downward ark in the sky to begin the sunset.

“You know, since I woke up after learning what I now am... I don’t know.” I replied at a loss. That brought a depressing thought to mind. After learning the truth about what happened to me, what was I to do with my life? How am I supposed to live in a world of death and misery as well as living as a bio-mechanoid?

While I was distracted by my thoughts, a dirty earth pony dressed in what used to pass as a factory jumpsuit with an eye-patch over one eye jumped out of an alley. The stallion twitched every so often, and his remaining eye was wide and unfocused. He looked like a bum, a common drug addict which sadly seemed to be a common sight in certain areas of Hayside apparently.

“Give me all your caps,” The dirty stallion demanded in a forced harsh tone.

I sighed tiredly with disinterest while Fruity shrugged his shoulders to make his plasma rifle known on his back to the stallion. “C’mon dude, just walk away, you don’t want to get cooked,” He said softly.

“Alright then,” The stallion replied and quickly shot forward and wrapped his foreleg around my neck and pulled me up against him and held me tight as if to hold me hostage despite not having any visible weapon at hoof. “Now, I’ll say again, give me all your caps,”

“I’m not in the mood for this,” I groaned with annoyance as the stallion tightly held my neck. Without moving my body I reached out with my nano-fibre tail. I ensnared my tail around the stallion’s own neck and pulled him off me. He yelped in surprise at having my tail grab him which made it easy for me to pull him away and then quickly deposited him away from me with a quick toss.

“Wow, you really are in a foul mood today aren’t you?” Fruity asked as he approached us.

“All things considered, yes,” I answered as I approached the downed thug as he moved his forehooves under his barrel as if to try and stand. My threat warning flashed and I quickly pulled my head back, just in time to avoid a slash from a switch blade that had been concealed within the sleeve of his jumpsuit. With a growl of annoyance, I pushed his foreleg down with my forehoof and then stamped on it. The stallion screamed in pain as an audible crack rang out from his leg.

“Jeez Crystal, do you think he deserved that?” Fruity asked with concern.

I scoffed. “We gave him a chance to walk away,”

“I guess but, don’t you think that was a little excessive?”

“Alright fine, I’m sorry ok, I’m really annoyed right now,” I replied with a soft growl as I fished out a healing potion from my medical box and gave it to the thug. “Now fuck off before I shoot you,”

The stallion, with fear clear in his eye took the potion and as fast as his healthy legs could carry him picked himself up and scampered away. It was like he couldn’t get away fast enough with how he was scrabbling to gallop off with three good legs.

“Are you ok?” Fruity asked as he laid a wing comfortingly over my back.

“No, not really, I’m feeling really annoyed right now,” I replied, hanging my head with a sigh.

“Is this because of what we learned from the hospital?” He asked while he gently rubbed at my withers with his wing.

“Yes, I feel like we haven’t learned anything and in fact taken a step back. Sure, we learned where we need to go is in Manehattan but we came from there. We also spent a bloody week on the train getting here and spent a further couple of days traipsing across the desert. On top of all that, we pissed about playing bounty hunter for some tall dark and handsome pony which sent us on a horror ride through our darkest fears, plus I feel horrible for lying to you for a week since we met about what I am,” I explained, letting it all out.

Fruity listened and continued to rub my withers soothingly. “Hey, we had an adventure. Sure it’s been bumpy, what with the shock of seeing what you really are and that Celestia damned stable trip through tartarus but hey, I think all in all its helped us grew closer together don’t you?” He asked as he gently pulled me closer to him.

I felt comforted by the warmth of his body against me and my foul mood lifted a little at his words, but just the other day when I was revealed he bolted at the sight of me. Sure he came back but it hurt and now I was wondering why he wasn’t so bothered now. I gently pulled away just enough so I could look him in the eyes. “Why are you so quick to accept me now after knowing what I really am?” I asked in a hopeful tone.

Fruity looked away for a moment as if in thought before he turned back and looked back at me, our eyes locking as he spoke. “Like you said, we’ve spent a week together on the train. Even though I know what you are now, I realise you yourself haven’t changed. You’re still the same mare I’ve grown to know and like despite the added knowledge that you’re a bio-mechanoid. I should never have doubted you and I shouldn’t have run off like I did. I’m sorry if I hurt you,” He apologised.

I blinked in surprise as tears threatened to spill from my eyes as he spilled out his forgiveness and an apology of his own. “W-what brought this on?” I asked in shock.

“Basically after hearing Dr Flask read out your medical report from his computer. You told me your story and what was wrong with you but to hear the evidence from him, from an official source…I suppose it put to rest any doubts I had about you or the story you told me.”

We stared at each other, just looking into each other’s eyes. I couldn’t look away from his hypnotic purple eyes as the tears in my eyes finally began to trickle down my cheeks. As we stared our muzzles began to draw closer and closer together and the closer we drew, the faster and harder my heart began to thump in my metal chest. I could feel my cheeks burning as we drew close enough that our noses were almost touching and I could feel his warm breath wafting over me from his nostrils. He then closed his eyes, tilted his head slightly to one side and leaned forward and pressed his lips up against mine in a kiss. My eyes widened in surprise but I felt elation from his acceptance and trust, I relaxed into the kiss, closing my own eyes and returning the kiss as I pressed forward as well. I felt all my tension melt away as we shared our first kiss together under the setting sun. Fruity pulled back from the kiss after a minute, but to me it felt like an eternity that we were engaged in our lip lock and smiled warmly at me.

“Feeling better now?” He asked with a goofy smile while he gently used his other wing to brush the tears that had dribbled down my cheeks away.

I nodded while the blush still burned my cheeks. “Thank you,” I said with a happy sigh.

Fruity gently squeezed me with his wing still over my withers. “Hey, I care about you. I got your back,”

I gave a genuine smile as I nuzzled under his chin. “I’m lucky to a friend like you,” I said softly. Our tender moment was ruined however when I heard a squeak beside us. Turning to face the sound of the squeak, I felt the blood in my face drain away as my eyes fell upon a giant bald rat. My heart froze in dread as my phobia of such things kicked in. “FUCKING RAT!” I screamed in terror and galloped as fast as my legs could carry me down the broken street. With how I tore away from Fruity I can only image I knocked him over to get away from the rat as soon as possible, but my sensitive ears could pick up the faint sounds of laughter as I ran for dear life.

XXXXX

“It wasn’t funny,” I pouted as we sat outside what used to be a cafe.

“I’m sorry but it was,” Fruity chuckled. He had found me shaking inside a wheelie bin near to the school on Broadwalk Avenue.

“Um, excuse me; are you the two ponies that sealed up Stable 16?” Asked a somewhat refined female voice.

We looked up from the table we were sat at to one of the casually dressed Queens ponies, a unicorn mare with a familiar elegant styled mane and tail and light blue eye shadow on her eyes that reminded me of the ministry mare Rarity.

“Um, that’s us,” Fruity confirmed.

“Oh good, ahem,” She coughed to clear her throat. “Miss Queenie would like to see you both personally at her private residence whenever you are available,” She announced in a professional manner.

“Wow really?” I asked surprised.

The mare simply nodded.

“Would she see us, um, like now?” Fruity asked. “We don’t have anything better to do right now do we Crystal?” I nodded in agreement.

The mare looked up at the darkening sky, the sun was nearing the horizon but it was still light out. “I don’t think it’s too late, ok… follow me please,” She said as she turned around and began to walk at a brisk pace.

We quickly got up and trotted after the mare. She lead us through a series of streets that almost made Hayside feel like a maze with how several of the streets were blocked off by rubble and just as the sky began to give way to the night, we emerged from a street that lead into an open area next to the perimeter wall as well as the dividing wall between Hayside and New Pegasus. Inside this open area sat a lone structure inside a half brick wall and iron fence. The building looked like a small manor and very familiar to me. It wasn’t until we came to the rusted open iron gates that the manor’s identity came to me. Each gate held the initials of its original owner and those initials were, “FR” and “SR”. This was the Las Pegasus home of Filthy Rich and Spoiled Rich.

I remember the Rich family clearly for two reasons. One being Filthy Rich; he made his fortune from a discount store chain known as “Barnyard Bargains” and was well known for all of his charity donations and fund raisers, he was the opposite of what some would expect from a rich pony. The other reason is his wife, Spoiled Rich, to sum her up in a word; she was just an utter bitch, snooty, stuck up, always looked down on ponies not rich like herself and generally arrogant.

The mare opened the front door to the old manor and lead us inside. The interior of manor’s lobby was breath taking. Despite everything being a little worn and tacky from being over two hundred years old, it all looked clean and very presentable. There were quite a few Queens walking around, cleaning this and that or doing something else, they all wore the same general casual attire but I noticed a trend. There were a certain few that shared the exact same mane and tail style, that familiar elegant curl. I suppose the style in mane and tail must symbolise a rank status or something as it was the only way to tell them apart. Directly in front of us was a large grand staircase that dominated the lobby which then spit halfway up to branch off to either side to reach the first floor. Standing on the landing where the stairs divided was a middle aged earth pony mare with creamy yellow fur wearing a familiar looking rose coloured dress with blue crystal hoof shoes. Her mane and tail were silver from age and was also stylised in that curl.

“Please, wait here,” The mare leading us said as we reached the foot of the stairs.

“Ok,” I said while the mare cantered up the stairs to the older mare.

“Darling, welcome home,” The older mare said in a stronger refined tone of voice. She sounded like an upper class pony and in everything I’ve experienced so far in the Marejave, it didn’t seem to fit. “Were you successful in your search?”

“Thank you mother, and yes,” Our escort replied, giving her mother a gentle neck hug upon reaching the landing. She then stood beside the well dressed older mare and gestured down to us. “These are the ponies responsible for sealing Stable 16,” She announced.

“Thank you Glitter dear, you may retire early this evening, you really must catch up on your beauty sleep,”

“Thank you mother,” Glitter said with a soft smile and respectful bow of the head before she turned and trotted up the rest of the stairs while her mother descended them towards us.

“It’s a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance Miss...” She began as she reached the lobby floor in front of us. She must’ve been in her mid to late fifties but she had certainly looked after herself for she had few noticeable wrinkles around her face.

“Oh, um, my name is Crystal Éclair,” I answered with a respectful nod as I realised she was waiting upon my name.

“And I’m Tooty Fruity, but please call me Fruity,” Added my pegasus friend.

The mare nodded at our names. “From what my Queens have informed me about you two, you are new in town, is that right?” She asked to clarify. We both nodded. “Well then, I am Miss Queenie, the leader of the Queens and welcome to my home,”

“Thank you for the invitation,” I said while I stood close to Fruity.

She gave a curt nod. “Please follow me,” She said as she turned and walked around the stairs to a door. We followed side by side as the elder mare lead us through the once proud estate. She led us down a couple of hallways that still had paintings of its original owners hung on the walls as well as landscapes of other places. We eventually were welcomed into a private sitting room toward the rear of the manor. It had several windows to the back of the room and to the left side while the rest of the walls mostly were decorated with bookshelves filled with mostly books ruined by age. In the middle of the room was a small table with a slightly stained tablecloth which also had several coasters on it and surrounding the table were sitting cushions.

“Please, take a seat,” Miss Queenie said as she gestured to the cushions while also seating herself on a large purple cushion with gold trim tassels.

“Thank you,” I said and slowly eased myself down on one of the cushions. Thankfully, my gentle action didn’t make the old cushion explode from my weight and held together. Fruity on the other hoof just plopped down without a care.

Miss Queenie gave a gentle smile as she sat up straight like a proper high class mare. “I would like to thank you both personally for what you have done. I know you didn’t do it out of the goodness of your heart since you went there initially to collect a bounty but still, you risked your lives inside that stable and choose to seal it up permanently. You probably didn’t realise it but you were saving the lives of countless ponies from a torturous death,”

I felt pride swell inside me to hear praise coming from Miss Queenie. I know she was like a leader of a gang, a gang that seems to maintain some resemblance of order in Hayside but also I didn’t get a bad feeling from her either and that I think she genuinely cares for the ponies in this town.

“Well, considering what we found out about that stable, we couldn’t in good conscious leave it open for any unlucky pony to stumble across it, nor could we really let those inside leave,” I said, getting a nod of agreement from Fruity.

“Oh, and what brought you to that conclusion?” She asked leaning forward with interest.

Fruity and I looked at each other with a grim expression. The memories of the stable still fresh in our minds and with what brought about its ruin. I sighed as I recounted our trip through Tartarus and back. I told her everything from the weird notes, the strange taste in the air, the insane inhabitants and then the true reason the stable fell apart. Miss Queenie leaned in closely as I recounted our tale and looked like an eager schoolfilly for gossip until I told her that Stable-Tec themselves were responsible for everything that transpired in that stable by unleashing the psychoactive drug into the air.

“Wait, so are you trying to tell me that Stable-Tec, the biggest tech company and builder of over a hundred shelters, built that stable purely as an experiment to record how the pony mind deteriorates?” Miss Queenie asked in shock.

“Yes, we found a guard’s written testimony detailing everything,”

“Sweet Celestia!”

“With the guard’s testimony detailing the drug in the air, we felt it was only best we seal the stable to prevent anypony else from stumbling upon the stable. We sealed the stable by destroying its control panels on both inside and out the door so now it’s permanently locked,” I finished. We strategically left out the portions that involved anything about me being a machine and our encounter with I-02 IS. We got around our near half day exposure by altering the part of our story to say I was rendered unconscious in the safe zone which wasn’t really that far from the truth.

After we finished our tale fully Miss Queenie leaned back from the table and gently clapped her forehooves in applause. “Marvellous, simply marvellous. You have saved everypony in Hayside from a horrible fate should they decide to try and scavenge in Stable 16 and not only that but also the entire Marejave. For what you have done for us I would like to offer you a favour,”

I raised an eyebrow. A favour, what did she mean by that?

She must have noticed my raised eyebrow. “A favour from me goes a long way, if it is within my power, it’s done,” She said matter-of-factly as she sat up straight with her nose in the air.

“Um, so we could ask for anything and if it was within your power as the leader of the Queens you would make it happen?” Fruity asked.

“Yes darling,”

“Don’t suppose you know of any M.o.A places around here do you?” I asked jokingly.

“Hmm, as a matter of fact, I do recall my Queens telling me several times of prospectors complaining about an M.o.A Facility they tried to scavenge in but failed to open the door to. If this is what you want, I can tell you were to find it,”

Fruity and I looked at each other for a moment; both of us had the same idea since neither of us wanted anything, plus we were waiting for the train to be ready and needed something to do.

“Yes please, we currently don’t have anything better to do right now and thank you,”

“It’s my pleasure darling, though I do feel it is a waste of my favour. But I’ve had worse requests,” She said as she stood up from her cushion and walked over to a small desk under the window between two bookshelves and opened a drawer. She nosed around inside for a moment before she plucked out a folded up piece of paper and brought it back to the table and laid it out and unfolded it. The piece of paper turned out to be a pre-war map of the Marejave and had many locations marked on it, many with question marks but plenty had the letter Q on them to suggest they were places known to the Queens and one such place was marked as “M.o.A?” between “Bon Bon Springs and here.

Miss Queenie gently tapped her crystal shoed hoof onto the map just next to the marker indicating “M.o.A?”

“This is where from multiple sources my Queens have identified the location of the facility. From what they have said, their sources have all described it hidden inside a house nestled in alcove around this area. However I must warn you, if you really are going to go out there. This area of the desert is home to Paradores.”

I snorted and chuckled to myself. I couldn’t help it, the name of whatever those things were Miss Queenie wanted to warn us about just sounded ridiculous.

“Forgive my friend, she’s been in a freezer for two hundred years and has no idea what a Paradore is,” Fruity said quickly.

“Ah, well in any case darling, do you still wish go out there?”

We nodded although Fruity was a little hesitant.

“Ok then,” Miss Queenie got up and opened the door for us. “I’ll show you to a guest room that you can spend the night in and later I’ll have one of my aids bring you a pair of 9mm Submachine Guns and a few grenades that should help you against the Paradoses should you encounter any tomorrow. I assume you’ll leave in the morning for the facility?”

“Yes, and thank you again Miss Queenie, you’re too kind,” I replied after being surprised at her telling us she’ll be giving us some guns and grenades. She gave a light smile as she lead the way through the manor again, leading us back to the grand stairs and then up to the first floor and into one of the hallways at the top. She stopped at the end of a hallway and gestured to red painted door.

“I hope you’ll enjoy your stay this evening,” She said before she cantered off again, leaving us alone. Fruity opened the door to the guestroom we’d be using and we walked inside. It was large and nicely furnished for a guestroom. It had a couple of armchairs with a small table next to a large window which sadly didn’t have much of a view as our room was facing the junk wall of New Pegasus. There were several solid oak dressers and wardrobes dotted about, but the most noticeable feature of the room was the large four poster bed against the back wall with red and white silk sheets and a huge heart shaped pillow leaning up against the headboard.

“Wow,”

“This is nice!”

We walked over to the bed but before we could climb onto it there was a short three raps against our door.

“I’ll get it,” Fruity announced as he turned and headed for the door.

I nodded as I decided to undress for bed. I sat on my hunches as I began to undo my duster, then took it off and folded it up neatly and placed it on the nearby armchair. I did the same with my undershirt and then placed my slightly tattered steston on top. I stood up and gently took off my dusty hoof shoes from my hind hooves that had been protecting my precious socks. Sadly, my socks had been torn in several places from our trip through that damn stable. At least by now my hind leg had fully regenerated, fur and all, although the regrowth of my fur nearly drove me mad when leaving New Pegasus. Lastly, I reached up to my ponytailed mane and pulled out the blue hair band and put it on top of my hat and shook my head to let my mane out and fall down around the back of my neck and shoulders.

I gently climbed up onto the bed. It creaked slightly as it took my weight but thankfully, the expensive hard wood bed was still strong enough to hold something as heavy as me. I sighed and sunk into the mattress, feeling relaxed for first time since leaving the train.

“Thank you,” I heard Fruity say before hearing the door close with a click. I lifted my head to see him walking over to the bed with a green ammo box balancing on his back with his rifle.

“That was quick,” I commented as Fruity sat down, making the box slide off his back and crash to the floor with a bang.

“Yeah,” He agreed. There was a dull thud as the lid opened and two small black 9mm SMGs fell out along with half a dozen grenades that rolled across the room. “Ah, bollocks!” He shouted as he quickly rushed to gather the rolling explosives and put them back into the ammo box and pushed it up right so they wouldn’t fall out again. I giggled lightly from watching him. I smiled as after he collected all the grenades he too then took his clothes off, just dumped them into a heap on the floor though, and joined me on the bed.

I rolled over to face him properly. He smiled warmly as he looked me over and I could feel both my cheeks heating up with a blush and my heart start to thump its way through my armoured metal chest again.

“You know,” He began softly as we stared at each other again, “You do look amazing,”

I felt my whole face feel like it went up in flames. “But you’ve seen what I really used to look like; do you really think I look good as a zebra?” I asked in disbelief.

He smiled broadly. “I do,” He replied honestly as he lean forward again. He pursed his lips and closed his eyes for a kiss. I did the same this time; I wanted this as much as he did. It was almost electric when our lips met and we began to push back and forth with each other as we kissed, mashing out lips while Fruity’s tongue soon began to press at my lips. With a soft moan of acceptance, I parted my lips to grant his tongue entry and I used my tongue to dance with his in my mouth. I could feel his passion in the kiss, I could feel how much he cared and it warmed my heart to know I was liked by a stallion this much despite him knowing what I am.

We broke the kiss after what felt like an eternity but were really just a minute or two. I cooed happily as I snuggled close to him and draped a foreleg around him and gently nestled my head under the crook of his neck.

“Thank you,” I sighed softly.

He replied by nuzzling into my mane before we fell asleep in each other’s embrace.

XXXXX

We had left Miss Queenie’s manor early that morning and headed out in a north-easterly direction. I had given Fruity one of the SMGs before we left and also split the grenades evenly between us. After our meeting with the Queens leader, my Pipbuck had updated its map with an unknown location and had automatically set a way point to it. We were currently following it.

By one in the afternoon we were well into the desert again. We had passed where Tango used to hide out and continued on. Dunes of sand and rocky hills were all around us now as well as a cliff to our left and worst of all my EFS was starting to fill up with red bars that seemed to be moving very quickly which made it hard to track them. We crested a hill and Fruity immediately pulled me down to my stomach as we saw mutated bug like creatures on the other side.

“Fruity, what are those?” I whispered in a scared voice.

“Those are Paradores,” Fruity replied grimly.

What we had seen was a large bodied bug like creature. It had small to near non-existent limbs, large orange wings, a stinger tail and a huge gaping mouth full of teeth. The worst thing was that there were loads of them, like a swarm in all the colours of the rainbow all hovering around. My waypoint was taking us on a path that would take us straight through them.

“We need to find a way around,” Fruity whispered.

“How dangerous are they?” I asked although I gathered they were pretty dangerous considering what I’ve noticed about them.

“Let’s put it this way, they catch us, we’re knackered,”

Yeah, that didn’t fill me with any confidence at all. “So, what do you propose we do?”

“I think it’ll be best if we sneak our way around them, hug the wall of the cliff and use the boulders and rocks near it as cover to get around them. It’ll take time but at least it’ll be safer than ringing the dinner bell for them,”

“Good idea, ok, let’s go,”

Fruity nodded and then crouched low as he began to sneak. I mirrored his movements, getting low and moving as quick but as quietly as I could toward the cliff. We weaved between rocks and boulders, trying not to kick over any stones or crunch any under our hooves as we snuck around the swarm of bugs. I kept flicking my eyes to my EFS to check on my threat markers but no matter how many times I checked I just couldn’t tell if I was seeing new contacts or they were the old ones because these bugs were moving so damn fast.

After what seemed like ten minutes of sneaking we got around the bugs and came to a curve in the cliff. We could see an abandoned looking house nestled into an alcove in the cliff up ahead and my direction marker was pointing right at it. That was it, we had found it.

*Clack, clack, clank*

Oh no. I froze as a stone had fallen from the cliff after I brushed passed it and it bounced off the rock face as it tumbled to the sandy floor on its way down. Suddenly, my threat warning flashed into my vision, bright red, and immediately afterward we could hear the sound of buzzing wings. We looked back and my stomach dropped like a lead weight. Nearly every single paradore, at least thirty in total, had turned to face us and were buzzing towards us.

“Change of plan, LEG IT!” Fruity yelled and without any further encouragement, we took as fast as we could for the abandoned house and what shelter it could provide us.

With a fearful yell I turned with Fruity and broke into a full on gallop. I could hear the storm of buzzing wings behind us as we ran for the house. Fear and dread gripped my thumping heart as I drove my mechanical legs to push me faster.

“What do we do?” I cried.

“Shut up and run!” Fruity yelled as he spread his wings and leapt into the air, flying parallel with the ground to free his hooves. As he glided, he reached into his duster pocket and retrieved one of the three grenades he carried and pulled the pin. He didn’t throw it like I expected, he held onto it for a couple of seconds before just dropping it so it landed in the sand as we sped past it. At first I didn’t understand why he didn’t throw it until it exploded and the explosion was accompanied by the sounds of several cries and squeals of pain from the mutants behind us. He must have figured the majority of the bugs would pass over the grenade chasing us by the time it exploded which would catch a good lot of them, killing or hurting them in the process. He pulled out his second grenade and did the same and we received the same result but this time with a few less cries of pain.

“We’re nearly there, keep running!” He shouted as he flipped over onto his back, pumping his wings and surprising me that he was still flying while flying on his back. While he flew on his back, he also had his Q-Modulator in his hooves and was aiming it behind us between his hind legs at the bugs. I didn’t look back, just kept looking forward as I ran, just kept my focus on the house as we came closer and closer while Fruity began to fire plasma bolts.

Fruity flipped back over and landed as we came to the house. The paradores were nearly quite literally on our asses as we threw open the front door and slammed it shut.

“Fuck, err, we need to barricade the door,” Fruity panted tiredly as we looked around. Thankfully, we didn’t have to look far as right next to the door was a large wooden cabinet.

“I got it!” I shrieked in a panic and reared up onto my hindlegs and grabbed the cabinet with my hooves and pulled. It didn’t take much for my mechanical super strength to pull it down from the wall and it fell in front of the door with a loud crash and blocked the front door. I was about to sigh in relief that we got away from the bugs when a crack of glass rung out from the room to the right up ahead in the hallway. We quickly ran through the hall and into the living room.

Paradores were bunching up against the windows trying to push their way in. Luckily for us, the windows were only big enough for one bug at a time to get through.

“This is good, we can bottleneck’em,” Fruity said as he quickly stood on his hind legs and aimed his plasma rifle.

I nodded and fished out my 9mm SMG from my duster pocket with my tail and plucked Lucky 13 from its holster and aimed both guns at the nearest window.

“Let them have it,” Fruity shouted and the pair of use began to unload our guns into the bugs trying to squeeze through the broken windows.

I discarded my 9mm SMG as soon as it ran dry because I noticed with my synthetic vision that the small calibre rounds were merely chipping away at the mutated bug’s carapaces. Even though Lucky 13 was a higher calibre, the bullets were penetrating but doing little damage but at least the revolver was slowing them down, slightly. Fruity of the other hoof was doing well.

“Eat shit and die,” He yelled with fright in his voice as a plasma bolt shot into the mouth of one of the paradoes that tried to squeeze through the window. The bug bloated up like a balloon before popping and showering its buddies in plasma goo.

With us both firing we managed to hold them off while also getting them to all bunch up against the windows. They were so desperate to get at us they were clogging the broken windows up with themselves.

“Crystal, quick, get two grenades out and pull the pins and throw them into the bugs,” Fruity shouted as he liquefied a bug that managed to get in.

I nodded, holstered Lucky 13 and quickly used my tail to fish out the grenades from my duster pockets. It took me a minute as I fumbled about trying to pick them both out in my panicked rush but eventually I got both of my grenades out. I gripped the grenades in my hooves and pulled the pins out with my teeth.

“Shall I throw them now?” I asked, considering Fruity waited with his.

“No, just hold onto them a little longer,” Fruity said in a very obvious sarcastic but frantic tone. “Throw the damn things!”

I eeped and fumbled the live grenades again and nearly dropped them. I held them ready to throw. There were four windows in the living room, all at the front of the living room and the middle two had the biggest concentration of paradores trying to push through the broken windows so I decided to throw my grenades through the two middle windows. I threw the grenades as hard as I could through the windows and into the bugs. I don’t know where one of them went but I heard the distinct sound of metal hitting wood meaning one of my grenades had bounced back and hit the wall of the house. As soon as I let the first frag loose, Fruity bolted for the door behind me which lead into the kitchen and booted the door down.

“Quickly!!” He shouted.

I got up and followed my friend into the small disgusting kitchen as he flipped the small aluminium dining table over onto its side and hunkered down behind it for cover. I quickly followed and as soon as I lay flat on my stomach behind the table, two explosions rocked the small old house followed by the sound of squealing bugs and splintering wood. After a few moments, we peeked out from behind out cover and through the kitchen door and sighed with relief as we watched what remained of the paradore swarm scurry away.

“Thank Celestia,” I breathed with relief.

“There’ll come back eventually, we better find that M.o.A thing fast,” Fruity warned.

I looked down at my direction marker. “We’re on top of it, it’s here somewhere,” I looked around, while being on top of it my direction marker wasn’t pointing to anything specific anymore. “Maybe we should split up, that way we can cover the whole house faster,”

“Good idea, we can’t hang around for those bastards to come back, I have no interest in being pony chow,” Fruity said as he moved to head back into the living room.

“I’ll check upstairs,” I announced and cantered to the stairs back in the hallway by the front door. The stairs creaked as I walked up the steps but they held thankfully and when I reached the landing at the top I only found three doors. One led into the bathroom, one into the small or foal’s bedroom and one into the master bedroom. All three of the rooms were missing their doors and the bathroom and small bedroom were empty saves for piles of rubbish and other debris. The master bedroom however was furnished, if lightly with just a bed and a wardrobe that covered the far wall. The answer to the missing bedroom doors lay in the master bedroom as they were up against the bedroom windows as if to bar them but they were littered with holes. On the floor by the wardrobe and next to the wall with the windows were two skeletons of griffons in what remained of combat armour.

“FRUITY!” I cried at the discovery.

“What, what is it?” He panted after he frantically scampered up the stairs to join me.

I pointed to the skeletons in the bedroom. My pegasus friend walked into the bedroom and examined the bodies.

“Griffons, been dead for years considering there is nothing but bone left. Hmm, maybe we can salvage their armour and...” He paused as he reached under the wing bones of one of the griffons. I walked over and sat down just behind him so I could see. “A lever-action shotgun,” He finished as he pulled out the dusty twenty gauge shotgun. “Hmm, unless you’re a unicorn or can balance on your hind legs, this gun is no good to us,”

“Let me see,” I said. Fruity shrugged as he hoofed over the dusty gun to me while he began to examine the armour. He was right; I wouldn’t be able to use the gun unless I was standing on my hindlegs as the lever and trigger were designed for griffon talons or minotaur hands, but there was a way for me to use this and a shotgun could be useful and a good backup weapon to Lucky 13. I knew I could use the gun if I held it with my nano-fibre tail and so I willed my tail to grasp the weapon by the handle and after thinking of how a griffon’s talons would hold the gun, I arranged the hairs in a similar fashion. Hmm, how was I supposed to cock the lever without supporting the gun by its barrel? I then remembered an old action movie where the action hero that was a minotaur and used a lever action weapon and instead of cocking the level like normal, he twirled the gun around his hand which cocked the lever out and back in as the gun completed the revolution and landed back into his grip cocked and ready to fire again. I would need to practice that style with my tail later.

“Alright,” Fruity said as he held the chest piece of one of the dead griffon’s suits of armour. “The fabric is too far gone to make their armour wearable, but we can salvage the actual armour plates. Maybe even add them to our own outfits,”

“How do you mean?” I asked as I placed the shotgun on my back.

“Like this,” Fruity said as he slipped the chest piece into place on his chest just under his duster but on top of his undershirt. “We’d have to secure the armour plate to our clothing first though, be like some sort or layered armour. I’ve seen a few ponies with cobbled together armours like this,” He suggested to which I nodded as he then picked up a shoulder guard and did the same, placing it on his shoulder and explaining how it could be fixed to the shoulder of the duster. After agreeing the armour plates could be useful to make our current gear more protective, we pocketed the plates and Fruity told me he had found the door to the basement earlier. If I was to hide something, it would be in the basement so we decided to check down there.

We descended into the basement through a door under the stairs into a dark but rather dry and large basement that was filled with cobwebs. Another thing that stood out to me in this basement was the lack of support beams for the house above and that it was quite bare. There was nothing in here. No boxes, no old rubbish, no nothing. The only thing I could see were a few sets of empty wine racks at the back which looked to be built into groves in the rock wall of the cliff the house was built between.

“I don’t see anything,” Fruity complained as we walked into the empty basement.

“Yea but something about this just doesn’t look right,” I said while looking down at my compass. This time, my EFS had a clear direction and it was pointing me to the wine racks. “My direction marker is pointing to the back of the basement,” I thought out loud.

It seemed that the basement was built up against the rock face of the cliff and the wine racks were built into small alcoves carved out of the rock. I moved from one rack to the next until I stopped at the last one in the left hoof corner of the basement right where my direction marker was pointing, and leaned close to get a better look at it.

“Found something?” Fruity asked.

“My direction marker is pointing me to this rack,” I said while trying to see past or through it.

Fruity stood beside me and then shivered. “Whoa, I don’t know if you can feel that but I can feel a breeze coming from behind that shelf,” He said fluffing his wings. It made sense if he could feel a breeze as he was a Pegasus. He was likely more in tune to air currents.

“So there is something behind there, so how do we move this?” I asked, looking at the rack and finding no way to grab a hold of it with how tightly it sat inside the small alcove it sat in.

“I dunno, give it a kick,” Fruity said with a shrug.

“If you say so,” I replied and turned around, reared up onto my forehooves and kicked with my hind legs. My rear hooves struck the wooden rack, but besides the splintering of wood a metallic clang rung out while I grunted in surprise. When I turned back around I saw the areas my hooves had hit were now devoid of wood but the frame of the rack was still intact as it was made from metal.

“Now that I didn’t expect,” I moaned, my rear hooves aching from the surprise strike on metal.

“Eeyup,”

I opened my mouth to say something when the rack suddenly began to move backwards deeper into the alcove. After it moved back about ten feet, it then slid to the right to reveal a large metal door behind it which was emblazoned with the insignia of the Ministry of Awesome.

“Um, I guess we found it…” I said after picking my jaw up off the floor after watching the secret door open.

Fruity just nodded with wide eyes.

As we approached the door to the M.o.A facility, something began to nag at the back of my mind. Something telling me that I should know this place, but I couldn’t for the life of me understand the feeling. The door was sealed tight and was covered in scratches and blast marks from either bullet impacts or explosive detonations so it was obvious we were not the first to make it this far. I suppose Miss Queenie was right that others had come here and tried to loot this place but couldn’t get past the door. Beside the door to our right sat a terminal with a card reader.

Fruity was standing by the terminal and with a nod from me he pressed a button on its keypad to wake it up. I joined him as the screen flashed to life but unlike the other terminals that displayed walls of text to which we had to choose a word to guess the password, this terminal simply said.

“Authorised personnel only... Keycard required.”

“A keycard…where the hell are we supposed to find one of those?” Fruity asked.

“I dunno,” I said feeling disappointed that we go this far and chased by mutant bugs to only get stopped at the door like everypony else who came to this place. As I read the first part again regarding a keycard something came to mind. My mother’s ID Badge we found the other day, it was an M.o.A ID badge and it did say on it that my mother’s security clearance was administrating level. I reached into my pocket where I put the card with my tail and pulled it out, if this works, then I never knew my mother as well as I thought I did and it scared me at the possibility my own mother had lied to me about who she really was.

“Are you ok?” Fruity asked with concern as he noticed me staring at the ID badge in my tail’s grip.

I shook my head. This wasn’t the time to lose my head over that. I could lose my mind over it during the train ride back to Manehattan when we had a week to ourselves. I took a deep breath and slipped the card into the card reader and the computer began to scan the internal chip. To my dismay, the red light above the door turned green and the door began to open as a male electronic voice spoke.

“Welcome back to Upgrade Station Alpha Mrs Éclair,”

I took the card back and slipped it into my duster pocket again as we began to walk inside. “What were you doing here mother?” I asked myself quietly.

“Wow that actually worked, I can’t believe it,” Fruity said amazed.

“Yea, but it also raised more questions about my past,” I said glumly as we had entered a short metal corridor.

Fruity walked up to my side and laid his wing over my withers. “Hey, we’ll find the answers eventually together, I promise,” He reassured. I smiled warmly at him and nuzzled his cheek.

“Thank you…”

We came to a door that looked very similar to one of those vertical opening doors inside stables and as we came within a couple of feet of it, the door opened automatically and allowed us access into a large open room. The room was pretty huge but also extremely dark as most of the lights were out. From what we could see from the open door, there were several chambers lining a wall, dark shadowy corners with metal boxes, canisters and cables and in the middle of the room was a large computer system. The computer screen was dark but there were still some blinking lights on its console to say it was still active. On further observation I noticed that there was no degeneration in here, no grime, no rust. It was like the door had sealed the outside world off and kept the contents of this facility safe. The air in here was also old and stale. I also noticed a table and several chairs were scattered about and over turned here and there with lots of papers all over the place like the ponies that worked here left in a real big hurry.

I turned to Fruity. “Let’s split up again, we’ll cover this place faster,”

“Sure, this place is rather dark and spooky, I’d rather be out of here as soon as possible, plus it’ll be best for us to get out of here before those buggers come back,” He agreed. I nodded and we parted ways. I headed for the chambers I saw against the wall while Fruity made his way to the computer.

I counted a dozen of these large black chambers and all but one of them was sealed up tight. They looked like large containers but they had an electronically controlled door at the front. I couldn’t figure out what could be stored inside but the last one I checked was open and curious to see if there was anything at all inside I walked in to investigate.

XXXXX

Fruity landed before the large computer. A single light from above illuminated the console and a section of the screen but the upper corners and edges of the screen were shrouded in darkness due to the lack of working lighting in the facility.

“Hmm, where’s the on button?” Fruity said to himself as he squinted at the keypads trying to find the console’s power button. After a few seconds of failing to see anything that resembled a power button of any kind, the pegasus resorted to the tried and tested technique of pressing random buttons to bring a computer out of standby. However, to the pegasus’s surprise and mounting frustration no matter how many different keys he pressed as he sat on his haunches the computer screen remained dark.

“What is wrong with this thing?” He muttered as he continued to press random buttons as his frustration grew. Unfortunately for the pegasus, he failed to notice the cracks in the computer monitor that were hidden in the shroud of the dark shadows that blanketed the edges of the screen. The cracks were from an impact hole in the bottom corner of the screen where a chair had struck the screen, which resulted in a short circuit and thus the screen forever went dark. Little did he know, despite the screen not working, the computer itself was still very much operational and his random button pressing was accidently triggering its systems.

Upgrade system engaged,” The same male electronic voice said from the facility’s speakers.

“Wait what?!” Fruity gasped in surprise. At that moment he heard a hydraulic hiss and whirled around to its source. His heart dropped to the pit of his stomach as he saw the chamber that his bionic zebra friend had stepped into close up tight.

“Ahh!” He heard Crystal scream from inside the end chamber and he was off like a shot. He flew across the room and landed before the chamber and banged against the sealed door.

“Crystal, are you alright, what’s wrong?!” He shouted while he tried to see if there was any way for him to pry the door open.

“My hooves, the floor clamped onto hooves, I’m stuck, help me Fruity!” She cried.

“I’m trying!” He shouted in a panic and rocketed back to the computer and began to feverishly press at buttons, hoping to hit a button that’ll release her. “Why won’t the screen come on?” He asked himself out loud as he tried to press as many button combinations as he could.

Compatible Infiltrator detected, please key in desired upgrade,”

“I want you to cancel and release my friend,” Fruity yelled in fear and panic for his trapped friend while still pressing buttons.

Pegasus upgrade keyed in and accepted, upgrading in t-minus ten seconds,”

“WHAT, NO!” Fruity screamed as he flared his wings and took off back to the chamber.

“F-Fruity,” Crystal whimpered as he banged against the door again.

“I can’t stop it,” He replied fearfully as he continued to look for a way to open the chamber but a square panel on the door that began to glow a dull red caught his attention and he rear up to investigate. As he stood on his hind legs and peered at the square, he realised it was a window into the chamber and he could see his friend bound to the floor. Her hooves were caught in what almost looked like bear-traps and despite her struggles she couldn’t pull her hooves free. At the back of the chamber the wall had split open to reveal a rotary rack with what looked like spare parts of many different pieces and beside it a series of manipulator arms which were all illuminated by a red light from behind them.

“Help me!” Crystal cried as one of the robotic arms from the back wall began to extend out.

Fruity jumped back from the chamber door and pulled his Q-Modulator from his back and aimed at the door. His intent was to melt through the door, but then again he could permanently seal the chamber with Crystal inside if he fired. He didn’t know what to do. He was totally lost.

“What am I to do, I can’t use the computer because I can’t tell what I’m doing and I can’t find any controls for this chamber and I can’t use my plasma rifle to melt the door because I could actually seal her in, ugh, what can I...” His train of thought was derailed when he heard Crystal scream in agony only for it to suddenly cut off mid scream. He felt his heart stop as he zoomed back to the window and what he saw horrified him. The robotic arm that he had seen moving toward her which had a large spike on it had been rammed into her forehead and now Crystal stood ramrod stiff and her stetson lay on the floor behind her, knocked off by the impact to her head.

“Crystal?” He called to her. His friend didn’t react to his voice or even move. “CRYSTAL?!” He screamed again fearing the worst until her head that was leaning back from being impaled by the robotic arm rolled forward slowly until it faced forward and she stood perfectly still like a mannequin. The pegasus stallion then heard the sounds of motors and he looked up to the back of the room to see four more robotic arms with manipulators extending out towards his petrified friend. As the new mechanical arms moved he noticed two mirrors in the top back corners of the chamber. He found it odd that there would be mirrors inside until he noticed a red glow coming from the palms of each of the manipulators.

“W-what’s going on?” He asked nopony in particular in horror. He could feel his heart thundering in his chest as he saw each manipulator let loose a beam of red magical energy from a small gem built into their palms. The beam was focused into a precision laser as it began to cut into his zebra friend’s flesh. The pegasus felt his stomach start to churn as the manipulators that had extended to her torso began to trace around the area that would make her shoulder and the worst of all were the two by her face that cut the flesh around her eyes. The process was painfully slow and in a few minutes Fruity witnessed the manipulators complete their incisions around both her eyes and around both her shoulders. Sadly they were not done. One of them moved down below her barrel and moved to where the end of her ribs would have been while another moved around to the back of her head and to the base of her skull and again they began to cut with their lasers.

“I’m going to be sick,” Fruity whimpered as a rectangle was cut into the back of Crystal’s head, he could only assume the same for under her barrel since he couldn’t see down there.

The bionic mare now had three manipulators around her barrel and one behind her head. Suddenly they shot forward, their piercing fingers gripping the flesh within the area that had been cut and with a sickening, sticky slurping sound the robotic arms pulled apart, each arm pulling a section of inch or so thick meat with them. The process also destroyed the mare’s outfit, her medical box fell to the floor and her duster collapsed from being torn and snagged by the manipulators leaving the mare naked in just her socks and shoes again.

“Holy fucking Faust!” Fruity shrieked as he saw the manipulators pull chunks of meat from his friend’s body, revealing large portions of her endoskeleton underneath, especially on her shoulders. From his perspective he could see the metallic shoulder blade but he could see what looked like a circular socket of some kind above the foreleg. He also saw a small rectangular chunk get pulled from under her barrel as well as from the back of her neck. The one from the back of her neck revealed a series of small ports. He caught movement again and watched as two of the manipulators moved back to the front of his friend and raised their manipulators to her face, aiming for her eyes that had been previously cut out.

Fruity’s eyes widened in realisation as to what was about to happen. “Oh Celestia, please no,” He cried. He didn’t know what was going on in there but he sure hoped that his friend couldn’t feel what was being done to her, he couldn’t imagine the amount of pain she must be in if she was conscious to it all. Then the worst happened, the manipulators thrust forward and stabbed into her very eyes, one of them even popped as they pulled the organic material off of her face before dumping it into a chute in the corner with the rest of the removed flesh. That was the last straw for his stomach and Fruity threw his head over to the side and lost his breakfast. Seeing the automated machine pull out his friend’s eyes was just too much for him.

After recovering, he wiped his mouth and unwillingly peered back through the window, he could see the mechanical eyes he was now familiar with, deeply set into her endoskeletal skull staring back into nothing in the mirrors in the corners of the room. She looked absolutely horrible now and he felt horrible because he knew it was his fault she was in this situation. If she survived this, he would have a lot to make up for.

“Not again please,” Fruity whined as the same two manipulators that took her organic eyes returned to her face and moved forward and grasped her synthetic eyes. The tips of the manipulators’ fingers fiddled for a moment inside her eye sockets before they pulled back with her robotic eyes in their grasp. However, unlike her flesh, the two arms moved to the rack which then rotated until an empty bin rolled around and they deposited the optical units into it. The rack began to rotate again until a wire basket of similar looking optical units rolled around. The robotic manipulators plucked an eye each from the selection and moved them over to his friend and inserted them into her skull, and after a minute of securing them the lenses of her new eyes began to glow with an electric blue hue.

The rack began to rotate again while one of the robotic arms moved under her barrel. The rack stopped just as the robotic arm opened a small hatch under her barrel, reached inside and then pulled out a small rectangular looking object with a lightning bolt symbol on the side to indicate it was a power source of some kind while the rack rotated until another bin appeared full of similar looking objects. The manipulator deposited the removed power cell from Crystal into an empty bin before retrieving a new power cell from the bin. It inserted it back inside of her torso and closed the small hatch.

The rack rotated again until the small items disappeared and full blown limbs back to roll around on the rack. Soon the rack stopped and had landed on a selection that Fruity knew all too well.

“Pegasus wings,” He said to himself as he saw the pegasus skeletal wing structures. They mimicked a pegasi’s wing almost perfectly in skeletal structure and each of the bone like segments were dotted with red talisman like objects. Two of the manipulators plucked a pair of wings from the rack, holding them by a small, dome like construct at their base before they moved them over to Crystal’s exposed shoulders. Fruity realised as the bonelike wings were shoved into the circular sockets, what the socket were for and that the wings were in full extend, allowing him to gauge what Crystal’s new wingspan would be when this was all over. “Her wings will be as big as mine,” He sighed with sorrow as the manipulators twisted, locking the wings in place before a rotating head on one of the fingers screwed in several securing pins.

The wrack began to rotate again until a series of wire bins with what looked like computer chips filled each one rolled into view. Two of the four manipulators moved up and into the bins, plucking a chip from a separate bin each before moving to the exposed portion at the back of her head and then shoved the new chips into her head before the four manipulator arms retracted back into the wall next to the rack.

Hardware installation, complete, commencing with mental conditioning and magic conversion,” The computer voice announced.

“Oh Goddesses please stop,” Fruity cried and banged in vain on the door as he watched. The arm stuck in his friend’s head began to glow as it performed what other task it was designed to carry out. The device glowed with power, extracting her previous pony type magic before selecting a stored magic from a pegasus that had given up their magic centuries prior and infusing the bionic mare with its pegasi magic. The process seemed to only take a minute or two before it stopped and then the robotic arm suddenly pulled back. Fruity began to dry heave when he saw the several inch long spike that had been driven into his friend’s forehead. He almost thought she was dead after having a spike shoved into her brain but when the robotic arm returned to its place in the wall, he noticed that in the mirrors he could see that she had another one of those circular sockets on her forehead and he then remembered that she also had an electronic brain inside her head. The spike must have used the socket to connect with the electronic brain. He expected her to snap back to reality as soon as the spike was removed from her head but she didn’t, and she remained ramrod stiff.

Mental conditioning and magic conversion, complete... subject pre-fleshed, commencing with genetic alteration and organic regeneration,”

Another robotic arm extended out from the open back wall but unlike the others, this one simply had what appeared to be a pink gem on the end of it. It rose up high above the partially deskinned bionic mare and then began to glow with a bright pink light, bathing the nearly upgraded bio-mechanoid in its healing glow. The wounds caused by the upgrade process began to close rapidly. Even the organic eyes that had been removed grew back as they followed the genetic profile of the mare that was being regenerated. The pink gem suddenly turned green and then the flesh that had bunched up around the newly fitted wings began to grow up the skeletal wings, forming new muscle fibres and skin. Soon, muscle and skin covered the wings and then white feathers began to grow, filling the wings with fluffy feathers. The last feathers to grow into the wings were the grey primary feathers before finally she was one hundred percent regenerated again, plus a new pair of wings.

Upgrade, Complete,”

Fruity let out a deep sigh of relief that the horror was finally over. The last robotic arm returned into the wall and it closed up, plunging the chamber back into darkness. Fruity almost fell over when the chamber door pushed out and began to slide open.

“Crystal?” Fruity asked softly.

His friend remained ramrod stiff for a moment before suddenly going limp. She nearly fell over before she caught herself and took a deep fearful breath. She suddenly backpedalled and bowled the pegasus over in a mad dash to get out of the chamber in her panic. She panted heavily in fear and rubbed at her new perfectly restored forehead.

“WHAT JUST HAPPENED?!” She screamed.

“I-I’m so sorry,” Fruity whimpered as he picked himself up.

It was then his friend noticed the large feathery wings sticking out from her sides. “What is this?” She asked in a whisper, reaching up with a hoof, she brushed at the grey primary feathers of one of her wings and she shivered, feeling the sensation of her feathers and her eyes shrunk to pinpricks. She slowly turned her head, eyes wide as she looked down at her sides. Her eyes grew even wider and she began to tremble upon seeing that the wings now belonged to her.

“Crystal, it’s going to be ok,” Fruity urged, noticing his friend was about to freak out. Unfortunately, she screamed in total panic, beat her wings and took off so fast she left a teal and orange gold contrail behind her. Fruity blinked dumbfounded, she was gone so fast he didn’t have a chance to try and stop her. He couldn’t comprehend how she could already fly and fly so incredibly fast. He was snapped out of his stupor when something smacked into the back of his head and tumbled to the floor. Looking down at what hit him he saw his friend’s stetson, slightly more tattered after being thrown from her head during the upgrade. “Oh Crystal, what have I done to you…?” He looked up and noticed the contrail was fading. “Oh shit,” He picked up his friend’s hat with his teeth and took off as fast as he could after her.

He quickly galloped out of the facility, through the basement, up the stairs into the house and out the front door while all the while following the fading contrail. The purple pegasus spread his wings and took to the air as he flew as fast as he could while he followed the contrail in the mid afternoon sun. For a moment he feared he would lose his friend with how the trail she left behind was fading but after following it east he finally saw her sat at the top a hill overlooking a valley. The contrail had completely faded by the time he landed and trotted slowly up to his friend.

“Crystal?” He mumbled around the steston in his mouth. He got no reply as she remained sat down staring into nothing. With a sigh he lifted the hat and gently placed it onto her head. She flinched and blinked before turning to him with wide, fearful eyes.

“F-Fruity?” She whimpered.

“Hey, are you ok?” He asked softly, knowing full well she wasn’t.

“I, I don’t know, what, what happened to me, why do I have wings, how do I know how to fly, how do I know how to use them?!” She asked, her voice started out in a whimper but grew into a pained cry of confusion and emotional agony from the experience she just endured.

“I don’t know, it must have something to do with the upgrade thing that was done to you,” Fruity replied sadly.

“Why couldn’t you have just left well enough alone?!” She suddenly screamed in rage, her wings flaring with her emotions.

Crystal was silenced when Fruity suddenly hugged her tightly and began to cry himself. “I’m so, so sorry Crystal. This is all my fault,” He said.” I shouldn’t have kept pressing buttons. I should have realised something wasn’t right with it.”

The pegasus zebra mare sighed, still looking distraught. “I’m even less than what I was before. Now I’m something entirely different. Just what am I?”

“The computer said something along the lines of a ‘compatible “Infiltrator” being detected’. I think it meant the type of robot you are,”

“Now I have even more questions.” Crystal sighed.

Fruity sat down beside her and wrapped a comforting wing around her. “I promise you, no, I Pinkie Promise that I’ll help you find out what happened to you and why you’ve been reborn like this,” Fruity said.

“A what?”

“A Pinkie Promise, it’s a promise you never ever break and keep forever,” Fruity said as he then began to chant. “Cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a cup-cake in my eye,” He said while at the same time performing the motions. The modified mare couldn’t help but crack a small smile at the odd display as she then leaned into him.

“Thank you,” She sighed.

A strong breeze picked up which blew past the two huddled ponies and they could have sworn they heard a feminine voice through the wind say “Forever”.

Chapter 10: Hello There

View Online

Fallout Equestria: Influx

Chapter 10: Hello There


Marejave Production Facility.


“Why have you failed to apprehend the Mark 1 unit on three separate occasions?” The deep voice of the computer demanded over the communication link with I-02 IS.

“I haven’t had the opportune moment to strike,” The machine replied, unconvincingly, with its smooth calibrated voice.

“As I just said, you had three chances to acquire I-01 but you held back and observed. I am starting to think that energy surge did more than force you to reset.”

“I will continue to track and observe and when the time is right, I will acquire the unit.”

“No you won’t!” The computer barked with a frustrated growl, finally grown too distrustful of his mechanical agent. “You, will return to base immediately for repairs.”

The machine paused for a moment before reluctantly answering it’s master. “Yes, sir.”

Shortly after those last words were spoken he cut the link with I-02 IS.

“I should have known that something wasn’t right with it when the neural patterns became erratic. Hmm, I can’t trust it anymore and there is no guarantee it can be fixed. I-02 IS was my only way into the wasteland, I need to find another.”

The wireframe face of the stallion disappeared from the monitor as he delved into the system, spreading out into every single system still connected and functioning. He was angered and frustrated when he found reminders of his betrayal at the hooves of Dr Pear. Any and all direct access into the Mark 2 Vault was severed and several other systems such as long range transmitters and receivers had been rendered non-functional to prevent him from calling for aid outside the Marejave. Growing increasingly frustrated as the hours passed, he finally got a break. It was a single connection but it lead into the Vault. However, it did not lead into any of its systems, rather a containment capsule. He returned to the monitor and brought up an image on the screen via the security camera inside the Vault to see what he had found.

In the middle of the chasm like chamber a single cylindrical column ran the height of the Vault from top to bottom in the centre and every several levels there were a platform around it. The camera was on the top level of the Vault overlooking the catwalks leading to the top level platform and sitting up against the central column but separate from the rest was a single capsule. This capsule was larger than the ones that lined the walls, at least twice the size and inscribed along the side of the viewing port was a single word and number.

“Unit 1000”

A sinister smile grew on the wireframe lips of the stallion as he gazed at the video feed showing the large capsule.

“Of course…my crowning achievement during the development of the Mark 2 Infiltrators... I understand now why I found its connection. Because I designed it so late in the development of the Mark 2s, it had to have its own separate capsule, so separate wiring had to be installed. I suppose Dr Pear didn’t cut them during her escape but this is perfect.” He grinned evilly as he remotely begun the activation process for Unit 1000.

Inside the large capsule the deep set optical units inside the eye sockets of the skeletal like robot began to glow with a deep red hue as its Mana Core activated and with a hiss the capsule began to open. The top half of the front began to slowly flip upwards while the lower half split down the middle and opened to allow the large robot to exit the confines of its capsule. Reaching its forelegs out first, the robot fell forward to land with a loud clang against the metal platform as it began to pull itself out. Multiple cables and cords began to pop and snap free from its neck and back as it was finally released from its prison and the large skeletal robot stood tall and almost regal in the dull red hued lights of the vault.

“Unit 1000 online.”

“Welcome to the Production Facility, Unit 1000, now that you are online, your first task is to active Units 1 and 2 and bring them to the Control Room.”

“Yes Colonel Ironside Sir,” The machine answered in a sweet motherly voice that didn’t sound right coming from a large skeletal robot.

The machine looked over to the first line of containment pods by the main door leading in and out of the Vault and next to it was the first line of Mark 2 units. Unit 1000 folded its skeletal like wings as it began to walk on its long slender robot bony legs, taking long regal strides, it walked across the bridge to the first capsule marked as Unit 1. The large machine briefly examined the pod for a moment before it located the manual activation console built into the pod’s exterior. A simple green button marked by a label that said “Activate” above it. Unit 1000 lifted a forehoof and pressed the button before it moved on to do the same on second capsule. The pods opened in the same manner as Unit 1000’s and each deposited a similar but smaller skeletal robot but these two lacked the skeletal wings and antenna like horn on their heads. Units 1 and 2 appeared to be just the basic Earth Pony models, standard Mark 2 units.

“Unit 1 and Unit 2, report to the Control Room,” Unit 1000 commanded.

The smaller robots looked up at the regal machine. “Yes ma’am,” They both replied in unison, both using the exact same emotionless and monotone electronic voice. The two machines turned, their nano-fibre tails swishing behind them as they turned the corner next to their capsules to the main door, Unit 1000 right behind them. However, the door didn’t open as they approached.

“You must engage the manual override, remote control system is offline,” The Colonel said when he realised his machines were waiting on him to open the door.

Unit 2, being closest to the door controls stepped up to the door’s console and pressed the manual override button. With a stressed groan from not moving in nearly two centuries, the heavy Vault door slid up to allow the three robots access to the Control Room.

The wireframe face of the Colonel smiled as he saw the three skeletal Mark 2 units walk into the Control Room and then stand to attention in front of his computer screen. Units 1 and 2 stood in front of Unit 1000 that stood at the rear, standing at least twice as tall and again holding a regal pose despite cutting a terrifying look with its skinless body. The three machines waited patiently for their lord and master to address them.

“Thank you for coming, it is wonderful to see that my life’s work is still thankfully operational even after all this time. Two centuries have passed since I started this project and sadly its original purpose has deviated due to the outcome of the Great War. However! We are still here and we can make a difference in this world, bring it back from the dark pit it has found itself in, but we cannot do that as we are.

With Dr Pear’s betrayal and disappearance over a hundred and fifty years ago we are left with only one option to fulfil our goals. We need to track down and acquire Infiltrator Mark 1 Unit 1, designation I-01, as it is the only Infiltrator to have had living flesh grafted to its endoskeleton.

A little while ago I dispatched my blank vessel, Infiltrator Mark 2 Unit 1002, designation I-02 IS, to acquire the Mark 1 unit. It failed. The job of capturing I-01 lies with you two, Units 1 and 2. You must track it down and capture the Mark 1 intact, it must NOT be destroyed. It is paramount that you bring the Mark 1 back in one piece and alive, do you understand?”

The two identical units bowed their heads. “Sir, yes sir,” They both answered in unison.

“Good, a word of warning however. After reviewing footage and data from I-02 IS, I have come to realise why it failed to acquire I-01 on its first attempt. The Mark 1 is being accompanied by a pegasus stallion, and he is helping and supporting it. It was his involvement that lead to I-02 IS getting trapped.

Normally, Infiltrators would work alone but I believe to successfully capture I-01 while its being supported by another, you two must work together. Support and look out for one-an-other so that you can both work to each other’s best potential instead of getting in each other’s way when going for the same target.”

The two machines bowed again and said their acknowledgement.

“Good, now go, I’ve uploaded I-02 IS’s observations to help you both, do not disappoint me.”

“Yes Colonel Sir,” The two machines said as they turned around and left through the door in the back of the control room that lead into a long wide hallway to the facility’s entrance.

“My orders, Sir?” Unit 1000 asked as it stepped up to the computer.

“You are too valuable to send out at the moment Unit 1000, you are to remain here until further notice and to activate any more Mark 2 units if need be. Also, if I-01 leaves the Marejave I’ll need you to relay communications with Units 1 and 2 since the facility’s long range transmitters and receivers are offline.”

“Yes Colonel Sir,” The large machine answered calmly as it sat down on its skeletal like haunches.

A dark grin split the lips of the wireframe face of Colonel Ironside as he watched the two other Mark 2 units turn a corner at the end of the hallway and disappear out of sight.

“Everything has started anew; soon Project Infiltrator will spread across Equestria,” He said to himself with a dark chuckle.

XXXXX

The hot Marejave sun was casting its early evening glow across the desert wasteland. Everything was strangely still as the wind was calm over the dried up lakebed between the Production Facility and New Pegasus. Everything was quiet in the desert beside the distant pops and bangs of gunfire from miles away. Like most things however, the quiet calm couldn’t last forever.

“FOR THE LOVE OF OUR GREAT FUCKING GODDESSES!” Screamed a female voice.

An Earth Pony mare burst out of a tent that had been set up on the lakebed near its once rocky shore. The tent’s canvas looking more like a patchwork quilt than that of a proper tent with all the patches sewn across it. The mare held a foreleg across her snout as she stumbled away from the tent; she sputtered and gagged as if she smelt something foul.

“You smelly assed bastard, I was right next to you,” She growled as the sound of masculine laughter drifted out from the tent.

“Haha, I’m sorry, heh, I couldn’t help it,” An Earth Pony stallion laughed as he crawled out of the tent after the mare.

“Damnit Buckshot! If I wasn’t your Celestia damned sister I would have tanned your hide for that,” The mare seethed.

The ears of the stallion wilted as he groaned. “Still can’t believe my little sister got promoted to Corporal.”

“Somepony jealous?” The mare asked with a smirk as she stood tall and puffed out her chest.

“Heh, yea, how did you do it Razzle?” He asked and poked her in the chest.

“Do what, get my promotion?” At the nod from her brother, Razzle continued. “I worked and trained hard, unlike you, you lazy shit.”

“Oh really, how many dicks did you suck?” Buckshot asked with a laugh before a swift hoof punch to the side of the face floored him to the dry lakebed. “Argh fuck!”

“I maybe your goddess damned sister but I’m still your fucking superior and you don’t talk to me like that, you fucking foul mouthed twat, you got that?” She growled rather threateningly with her teeth bared and just millimetres from his face down on the floor.

“Y-yes ma’am,” He whimpered.

*Crunch*

The sound of a stone crumbling immediately gained the attention of the squabbling siblings and they quickly stood back up and began to survey the surrounding area.

“What was that?” Corporal Razzle asked quietly as she narrowed her eyes, trying to see across the flat plain and into the long dark shadows cast by the setting sun.

“Something’s here,” Private Buckshot remarked as he looked in the opposite direction, ears twitching this way and that way trying to pick up any other sounds.

There was a soft clang against a large boulder nearby that gained the attention of two mercenaries. Private Buckshot and Corporal Razzle regretted their earlier banter as they were currently without their gear with a possible threat now looming around the corner. Now, any possible attempt at acquiring their gear could result in their demise. Corporal Razzle nodded to her brother and indicated to the boulder with her head; the older brother gulped as he quietly began to crouch and slowly creep towards the large rock.

Razzle held her breath as her brother stuck his head around the boulder. “Anything?” She quietly called in a whisper, just loud enough for him to hear.

He pulled his head back and turned around and shook his head. “No, I di…” He froze solid in fright as he looked back at his sister, eyes wide in shock and fear as he looked past her.

“Buck?” She asked tilting her head at his sudden change in behaviour but then something brushed against her flank. Something cold and hard. With a startled eep she whirled around and stepped back, only to be face to face with a black metal skeletal robot with glowing red eyes in its skull like head and “I-02 Unit 1” etched onto the left eyebrow. “WHAT THE FLYING FUCK!?”

Suddenly Razzle heard her brother cry out in pain with a loud thud behind her. Turning quickly, she gasped in horror as she saw that another one had appeared and had pinned her brother to the floor with one of its skeletal robotic legs. This new robot bore “I-02 Unit 2” on its left eyebrow, telling her they were both together. Before Corporal Razzle had time to attempt a retreat or rescue she felt a hard solid impact to her chest that lifted her off her hooves and then with a cry of pain, was slammed into the floor beside her brother and was pinned down by so much weight she felt as if it was pushing her into the soil to be buried alive.

“Viable disguise options acquired, initiating mind copy,” One of the machines said in an emotionless monotone.

The two floored ponies continued to struggle for all they were worth while they were held down by the two heavy robots. They feared for their lives as the machines lowered their heads down towards the ponies’ heads. Once they had lowered their heads and were pointing their forehead expansion ports towards them a small bulb like device extended out from the socket.

“This is a delicate process, it would be in your best interest to stop struggling,” Unit 1 said and to emphasize its point it rolled its robotic hoof so the tip of the hoof poked Razzle in the chest, threatening to pierce.

“H-hold still B-Buckshot, hold still,” Razzle shakily said as she did everything she could to calm herself down and to remain still despite the tremendous fear welling up inside her. Private Buckshot was exactly the same, although feeling a lot more nervous as the machine holding him down had a hindhoof very close to something very sacred to his anatomy.

With their targets now complying, the bulb like device split open to reveal a gold mesh which fell over and covered the heads of each merc.

“Mind copy initiated,” Unit 2 stated.

“Hold still please, there will be some momentary discomfort,” Unit 1 added.

Razzle gritted her teeth as a tingling sensation over took her head, like someone was sending an electrical current through her brain. She fought to remain still even as she felt as if her brain was being torn from her head. Her brother was feeling the same thing as he let out a cry of anguish from the unusual sensations running through their heads. Thankfully, within a couple of minutes the procedure was complete and the two ponies lay back panting and groaning, their heads spinning and unfocused. Meanwhile, the two machines retracted their mind copying devices and stepped off the mercs to process what they had gained.

The two machines powered down for a brief moment as they rebooted now that the mind copying was complete. The reboot was necessary so the minds they acquired could be applied to their neural nets. The two ponies slowly pulled themselves back up to their hooves just as the two robots reactivated. Both mercenaries flinched and froze, not wanting to gain anymore unwanted attention from the robots.

The machine marked as Unit 1 turned to its companion. “Status,” It said in a perfect copy of Razzle’s soft yet commanding feminine tone.

“Mind one hundred percent integrated, all memories and personality intact,” Unit 2 replied in a perfect copy of Private Buckshot’s dull nonchalant tone.

The mouths of the two mercs dropped to the lakebed floor as the two machines had just mimicked their voices perfectly.

“How is that possible?” Corporal Razzle squeaked.

Unit 1 turned its head to the mare, if the machine had lips, Razzle was sure it would be smirking at her. “Oh we know everything about you now, where you were born, where you live, what you do for a living, everything.” The machine replied as it approached, its gait now more loose and with a bit sway to the hips, giving the machine quite the feminine walk.

“But…how?”

“Heh, sorry but that info is classified, isn’t that right...” The machine paused for a second at what it was about to say but decided to finish its question. “Brother?”

Unit 2 had sauntered off to the mercenary’s tent and had begun gathering up their belongings. “Correct-a-mondo,” It replied, not fazed by the term of brother used to address it.

The two organic ponies began to feel fear rise in their hearts as they watched the other machine start packing up their camp and equipment.

“Are you going to kill us?”

“Kill you?” Unit 1 asked with a scoff to its new voice. “No, we are Infiltrators not Terminators. It’s not our mission to kill random ponies. We just needed a disguise to blend in with the populace, once we have all your equipment we’ll leave you be.”

“You can’t take all our stuff,” Private Buckshot shouted.

“We can and we will,”

“You won’t get away with it,” He argued.

Unit 1 let out a mirthful laugh. “Who is going to stop us and believe you?” It asked facing the flustered male, “You two surely cannot stand against us. Your superiors will think you’re crazy if you tell them, or other ponies for that matter, that you were robbed by a couple of skeletal robots that also copied your minds. You’d be a laughingstock! The Gunners would certainly demote you. Or kick you out.”
Private Buckshot looked like he wanted to argue more but he closed his mouth when he felt the forehoof of his sister rest on his shoulder. “The robot is right brother, if we tell anypony about this, the story will sound so farfetched that they’ll think we were on drugs and likely got robbed while being passed out or something and we conjured up that story to hide the embarrassment,” She sighed.

“Fuck, shit, fuck, bastard, ass, wank, cock, fucking, cunt, twat,” Buckshot colourfully cursed in rage, especially when Unit 2 picked up is favourite 12gauge.

Corporal Razzle swiftly gave her brother a quick slap to the back of the head for his colourful outburst.

“Please, you can’t take everything, it’ll be a long hike back any of our outposts for resupplying.” Razzle reasoned.

Unit 1 turned to Unit 2 that was now dressed in a full suit of old Equestrian Army fatigues and army boots on each hoof. It also had armour plating strapped around each leg and around its chest with a light battlesaddle strapped around its barrel. The battlesaddle cradled a pair of shotguns, on one side was a drum fed combat 20 gauge shotgun and on the other was the large bore 12gauge. The only thing missing from the ensemble was a helmet.

“Leave all the food and drink and any redundant clothing,” Unit 1 ordered.

“Yeah, yeah,” Unit 2 replied sounding almost bored.

“Wow, that’s exactly how I’d respond if that was me,” Buckshot whispered.

A few moments later Unit 2 trudged over to its companion and dumped the redundant supplies before the Gunner Mercenaries.

“Get out of here, this isn’t a peepshow,” Unit 2 said with a stomp of the hoof.

The two ponies waited for a moment to see if the machines would stop them but when they didn’t make a move they quickly gathered what belongings the machines let them have and ran as fast as they could away from the camp.

“Are you sure it was a good idea letting them go?” Unit 2 asked.

“They’re harmless, we have their equipment and by the time they gather anything of a task force, if they do, we’ll be long gone,” Unit 1 replied as it turned away from the fleeing ponies and approached the tent and began to slip into Corporal Razzle’s gear. Razzle had the same Equestrian military fatigues and combat armour plating but unlike Buckshot’s armour, hers was polymer reinforced giving it a lighter colour, plus she also had the Corporal badge pinned to her fatigues and etched into her armour shoulder guards and chest piece.

Razzle’s armaments were a pair of sub-machineguns that could fit into holsters. One holster was strapped to each foreleg. The last of the Corporal’s armament was an explosive belt with eight apple shaped fragmentation grenades clipped to it that it fastened around its waist.

Units 1 and 2 soon found a pair of combat helmets to wear with their outfits, a pair of goggles to hide their eyes and a scarf each that they could use as a face wrap to hide their exposed mechanical muzzles. Once fully covered the two disguised machines looked at each other, gave a brief nod and began to head north.

“New energy signature detected!”

Unit 1’s scanner alerted it to a new energy signature.

“Sister, you detected that too right?” Unit 2 asked.

“Of course, it is coming from the last known location of I-01,”

“I-02 IS is still in the area; do you think this means the Mark 1 has been upgraded?”

“It was reported by I-02 IS to be entering the M.o.A cover property for Upgrade Station Alpha so it is more than likely,” Unit 1 said as it reviewed its data. “Possibility of upgrade, we need to hurry before it gets too far away, double time Unit 2!” It shouted as it broke into a solid gallop.

“Yes ma’am,” Unit 2 sighed as it fell into step behind its companion.

XXXXX

I-02 IS or as he now preferred to be called, Nexus, stood on the ridge above the cover house that sat above the hidden facility. He was taking cover and keeping out of sight while he watched two pegasi that were flying towards the property. He focused on the two ponies and he instantly recognised them. A feeling of dread and fear washed over him as he took in the familiar features of the duster wearing purple pegasus with a plasma rifle slung over his back. The feeling doubled when he moved his gaze over to the other pegasus but at the time a feeling of intrigue filled his mind. He recognised her as the one that trapped him against the Stable door and left him there to have a powerful magical explosion go off practically in his face. She was also his target, but his curiosity about the inferior machine that bested him as well her as her un-machine like behaviour had made him curious in learning about her.

He crept closer to the edge of the ridge as the two ponies came down for a landing. The purple one landed gracefully but the pegasus zebra landed like a lead weight and crashed into the dirt with a heavy thud.

“Geez, I thought you knew how to fly?” Nexus heard the purple one ask as he cringed after watching his companion faceplant.

“Ugh, now that I’m fully conscious about all this, the landing is harder than it looks, and terrifying,” His target replied with a pained groan.

“Well the instructors at flight camp always said the landings are the hardest.”

“Uh, no shit Sherlock,” The disguised bio-mechanoid complained.

“C’mon, we better hurry, we don’t want to be here when the sun goes down,” The purple pony said as he helped his friend back up.

“Yeah, the desert’s critters get more active at night,”

“True, but for things like Paradores, its ringing the dinner bell and they’d swarm this place again and we don’t have any more grenades to scare them off. I like my butt where it is thank you very much, so we better get your shit and scarper as soon as, unless somepony has been here while we were gone and half inched your shit,”

“Half inched?”

The purple pegasus stared at his friend for a long moment before sighing. “It means nicked, as in stolen, Celetia above you Equestrians need to get out more,”

The mare began to giggle.

“What?”

“That’s one of the things I love about you Fruity, the way you keep talking, oh what’s the word, bollocks,” She said with a giggle.

From his vantage point the machine could see the purple pegasus known as Fruity crack a cocky grin. “Being a bartender, it was a job requirement to talk bollocks all night.”

The two shared a laugh and entered the M.o.A property. Nexus stood and looked up, the sun was casting the world in a brilliant orange now, and there was probably only an hour or so of daylight left. He was still compelled to learn from this inferior model. Something about it was different and he wanted to know what before he decided on following the Colonel’s orders.
Nexus stared down at the broken old house for a few moments longer as he pondered what to do next but before he could decide he felt something buzz through his commlink with the Production Facility. It wasn’t a communique or anything of the sort. As Nexus opened his channel he felt an extra three connections to the channel with the facility. Two of the connections were also linked to one of new connections which intrigued him. Feeling out into the connection to connect with this new presence he was shocked when he was slapped with an “Access Denied” stick but the biggest shock came in the form of the new presence’s identity.

“Unit 1000?!” Nexus gasped in shock.

Nexus remembered that he was the only Mark 2 unit outside the Vault and only he was still active. If Unit 1000 was now in the communication link then that meant that the last official Mark 2 unit built for Project Infiltrator had been activated which also means Colonel Ironside has some access to the Vault.

“How and why would he activate Unit 1000 when I’m still out here?” Nexus asked himself. “Does he no longer have faith in me?”

The machine continued to ponder this as he stared down at the structure. A feeling of unease and hurt began to fill his mind at the loss of trust as well as worry. He knew that Unit 1000 was bigger than he was and since they were both machines, it would make it stronger than he is since it would have to deal with more weight to handle. Not to mention the machine was also the only one to have been built that way, all other units had been built to the standard height of an adult pony, but Unit 1000 was different.

Nexus looked back into the communication link, again noticing the other two that were there that were connected to Unit 1000. Again he received an “Access Denied” when trying to connect with them which he supposed he should have expected since they were connected with other machine but when he tried connecting with the facility, a sense of “Something feels wrong” began to overtake him. All he received was a static repeat of “Return to base for repairs,” Any question he asked was answered by the same repeated message over and over again.

“I’m locked out, this doesn’t feel right…” Nexus said to himself as he started to roll his shoulders in his singed riot armour as a reaction to his neural net filling with nervousness. “What am I to do?”

XXXXX

I had to admit, flying felt wonderful despite the oddity of suddenly being able to. The rush of the wind against my fur as well as through my feathers was quite invigorating. I’m still getting used to the feeling of having wings but it’s strange; they feel new but old at the same time. Ugh, it’s got to be all this flight knowledge and memory crap that was shovelled into my brain during the upgrade. I don’t know how I got out of the facility and out to a hill top like I did but I suppose being super upset had something to do with it and I wasn’t thinking straight. I spent a good hour or two going over what I knew about flying with Fruity. Becoming consciously aware of what I was able to do now. Taking off and the actual flying come as naturally as walking to me, I suppose again this had to do with the upgrade shoving all that stuff in my head but also the magic of a Pegaus replacing what I had before which is probably why it felt so natural. The landings however were scary, coming in at a hover isn’t so bad but if you’re moving you have to compensate for your momentum and weight so you can brace your legs and try to slow yourself down. Something I failed to do before we returned to the facility and I ended up crashing.

“Are you ok?” Fruity asked as he laid a wing over my withers.

I shivered and ruffled my newly acquired, if somewhat large, wings. “Not really, I’ve just been turned into something else,” I sighed glumly as we stepped into the underground facility. My breath caught in my throat as my eyes, that could see clearer now for some reason, focused on the open and blood stained upgrade chamber to the left of the facility.

“Hey, look at me, you are ok, it’s not going to hurt you ok,” Fruity reassured. I nodded but still gulped down my anxiety as my heart began to thunder in my chest. The feeling of being trapped in my mind and being unable to do anything at all returned to the forefront of my memory as my attention was solely focused on the upgrade chamber. I remember that spike like thing being driven into my forehead, it was as soon as that thing ran into my head that I lost all feeling to my body, lost all control and felt like I was floating in a sea of emptiness. There was nothing I could do; I had never felt so scared and helpless in my entire life.

“I, I can’t,” I choked out as Fruity reached for the chamber.

I could feel myself shivering when he turned back around. “It scared you that bad huh?” He asked softly. I gave a pathetic little whimper and nodded. “Hey, its ok to be scared, don’t worry. I’ll get your stuff for you,” Fruity reassured me. I gave a thankful smile as my coltfriend turned back around to the chamber and entered the bloody enclosed space.

“It’s horrible in here,” He commented absentmindedly. After a good few minutes the purple pegasus dragged my medical box, what remained of my duster, the lever-action shotgun and my hat over to me.

“Thank Faust my hat didn’t get bloody,” I sighed with relief as I used my tail to pick up the slightly tattered stetson hat off of the pile of shreds and placed it back on my head. The hat didn’t sit comfortably in its normal position as for some reason my mane on the top of my head had puffed up some, so I moved the worn hat back slightly where it then settled comfortably between my ears at a slight angle. I positioned my medical storage box onto my back between my wings and slung the shotgun over my back behind it, resting more near my rump on my lower back. I gave my fluffy wings a few test flaps to make sure the box didn’t get in the way which it thankfully didn’t. Finally, I emptied the pockets of my duster; it was kinda amusing to see all the biggish items fall out and suddenly pop back into full size because of the magic pockets. Since my medical box didn’t have such a magical storage ability all the large items went into Fruity’s duster pockets and anything small enough went into my box. The armour segments I recovered from the griffon mercenaries from upstairs had to also go into his pockets since I’m still in need of some new straps for them but I’m going to have to wear them at some point, at least until I can find a new outfit.

“C’mon, lets skedaddle before those little bastards come back,” Fruity urged once we were fully loaded.

“Ok,” I agreed.

“We can’t through the valley since they’ll all have gathered there by now, where are we gonna go?”

“Why, can’t we just fly over them?” I asked and gave my wings another flap. Feels weird to be able to use these wings so naturally despite not being born with them or having them until just a few hours ago.

“Those little farts are more troublesome in the air than on the ground and falling to your death from up there is a horrible way to go, believe me,” He replied sombrely. It sounds like he experienced such a thing first hoof. I should ask him about it later. It sometimes can do a world of good to a pony to talk about things like this.

“I see, um, remember that radio tower we saw earlier, maybe the ponies that run the radio station know a way around,” I suggested.

“Heh, worth a shot,”

With a nod we galloped out of the facility and then out of the abandoned house into the darkening desert. The sky was a deep purple, meaning the sun was just moments from slipping under the horizon.

“Shit, we gotta jet!” Fruity said with urgency.

We spread our wings and thrust ourselves into the air with speed to rival a bullet as it leaves the chamber of a gun.

The view was amazing; despite the ruined cityscape behind us and the several craters dotting about the landscape, looking out on the darkened desert, you could almost forget about the ruined cities that dotted it. I could see the radio tower much clearer from up here, it wasn’t a radio station at all but more like a small settlement built around the radio tower. The settlement was built inside of a large rocky alcove with a sloping gradient until the top where the radio tower sat amongst some large tents. We decided to land at the start of the slope leading up into the settlement as there was a guard keeping watch, it wouldn’t do us any good to suddenly drop in unannounced since it’s a good way to get shot as Fruity has once told me. I angled my wings forward to put myself into a shallow dive and before reaching a dangerously lower altitude I angled them back up to level myself out with the ground. This was where I went wrong last time; I didn’t slow down enough. I began to flap my wings hard with them angled back so the air propulsion I was creating was being pushed out in front of me, slowing me down. Eventually, my speed slowed to a crawl and I was able to land safely onto my hooves, leaving me panting in relief that I didn’t mess up this time.

“Good job Crystal, you just buried him,” Fruity laughed.

“Oops,” I blushed with embarrassment.

“Ugh, damn pegasi,” The guard sighed as he pulled himself out of the sand I’d blown onto him. “Good thing I wear a helmet,”

“Sorry, I’m new to flying,” I said sheepishly. It was then I realised the guard was wearing and that he was a Desert Ranger. “Oh, wonderful you’re a Ranger. Can you help us please, we need a way back to New Pegasus, we can’t use the valley since it’s full of Paradores, so would you happen to know a way around?” I asked hopeful.

There was a pause as he stared at me for a moment. “Sorry kid, I don’t know the area all that well so you’ll have to see Lieutenant Muguet,”

“Oh ok, um where can we find her?”

The stallion pointed up the hill and into the settlement. “She’ll be in her command tent round about now,”

“Can we see her, please?” I asked inching closer to the slope.

The Ranger eyed me, my two guns and then Fruity for a long while before he answered. “Sure but be warned, the settlers here may not take too kindly to you.” He said while pointing at me.

“Why me?” I asked feeling a little offended.

“They are all refugees from Illustrious Moon tribal attacks in some shape or form so they have a grudge against zebras, even those that are not black striped like you,” He replied with a sigh. “So be careful as you walk through the settlement, oh and welcome to Bonbon Springs.”

“Err ok, thanks,” I said to both the warning and the welcome.

“This should be fun,” Fruity remarked sarcastically.

“Yeah, should be a hoot,” I agreed with a sigh as we began to trot up the slope.

It then just clicked as we passed the old welcome sign post to the settlement. Bonbon Springs was the location of a massacre a few years ago according to the Desert Rangers we met back in New Pegasus and it was against the Illustrious Moon zebras. It looked like after driving them out, the Desert Rangers built a settlement on top of the old tribal camp.

As we cleared some huge boulders at the bottom of the slope, the settlement opened up into a large circular space surrounded by sheer rocky walls. The path continued up a slope to a set of tents at the top on a ridge that over looked the settlers and their makeshift houses that were mostly old tents or shacks. We could see a groove in the rock wall to the left, like a backdoor or something to the settlement. As we went deeper into Bonbon Springs, we were able to see through the hole in the rock and the path seemed to lead up into the mountains so maybe not a backdoor then.

“WHO LET THAT DAMN STRIPE IN?!” Came an angry shout from an open tent flap up ahead. Oh dear.

At the pony’s shout, other settlers stuck their heads out their homes and glowered towards me; some even picked up rocks and looked ready to throw them but didn’t make a move, thankfully.

“Whoa, easy there, we come in peace,” Fruity said, trying to defuse the hostility. “Did I really just say that?” He whispered with a groan.

The settler that shouted just narrowed his eyes and stared at us as we began to climb the slope towards the large tents on the ridge.

“Jeez, friendly bunch,” Fruity said to himself as we began up the slope to the tents.

“Fruity, shut up,” I hissed. I felt like nearly all the entire settlement had their eyes on us as we walked. The purple pegasus scrunched up his muzzle as he tightly closed his mouth.

We crested the hill and immediately had a Desert Ranger shove his Anti-Material Rifle in our faces. The shock of having the large bore of the fifty calibre rifle in my face made me flare my wings out in surprise.

*Slap*

“Ah, son of a bitch!” Fruity cried as one of my flaring wings slapped him across the face unexpectedly. “Those things are lethal,”

The Ranger was helmetless and he stood there for a long moment, staring in surprise at my great white and grey feathered wings. “A winged zebra, that’s a new one,” He muttered before coughing and getting his thoughts back on track. “What business do you have here, zebra?”

I mentally fought to retract my wings but for the moment gave up and left them open. “Um, we just wanted to see Lieutenant Muguet, that’s all.”

The Ranger stepped aside to let us pass. “If you came to see the LT I guess its ok, but no funny business you hear, I’m watching you,” He said as he narrowed his gaze slightly. “You’ll find her in the tent at the back,”

“Ok, thank you sir,” I said with an appreciative nod.

“Yeah, thanks dude,” Fruity added as we made our way for the largest of the three tents.

The back tent was also the only tent to have a metal doorframe with an actual door.

“I guess we knock,” I said to Fruity as we approached the door. He gave a nod and I raised a hoof and gently tapped the door. I didn’t knock too hard, I was afraid of knocking the door down; I didn’t know how secure it was.

“Ugh, I swear, if this is another settler complaining about another theft I’ll…” Lieutenant Muguet stopped mid-sentence as she wrenched her door wide open, looking like she was fully ready to tear into us but as her eyes fell upon us her annoyance seemed to just get swept away and was replaced by confusion. “Err, sorry, who are you?”

“My name is Crystal and this is Fruity,” I quickly introduced us.

My intention of asking her about another way around the mountains was put on the back burner as her complaint of theft sounded like she needed some help. She did look like she was at her wits end about this, considering how she reacted to my knocking on her door.

“Bad day?” Fruity asked regarding the mare’s reaction.

The Desert Ranger Lieutenant fixed him with a pointed stare. “Bad day, a bad day doesn’t even cover it, try a bad fucking year,” She nearly yelled.

“What’s wrong?” I asked with genuine concern.

“You’re not from around here are you?” She asked to which we both shook our heads. She sighed. “Around two years ago things began to go missing around the camp. Nopony complained or made any sort of fuss at first but as the weeks and months passed items would continue to go missing. It wasn’t until about a year ago that a settler actually came forward with a complaint about someone stealing food from him and from then on ponies were reporting thefts nearly three times a week.”

“That is rather frequent,” Fruity observed as we listened.

“We investigated the crime scenes but could find little evidence of anypony being there. There were no hoof prints, no signs of forced entry, nothing out of place besides the stolen items and no one would know they were missing until they would want that particular item,”

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“What tends to go missing is food and drink related,”

“So somepony is stealing food and drink?”

“Yes, whoever our thief is he’s crafty. We’ve set traps around town and so far only succeeded in capturing our own settlers by accident. Nothing we try seems to work and with all the ponies complaining and yelling at us about the thefts, I’m losing my mind over it all.”

“Um, maybe we can help, you never know a fresh pair of eyes and ears might be all you need,” I suggested.

“Aren’t we in a hurry to get back to New Pegasus?” Fruity asked.

“C’mon Fruity, the least we can do is help them out,” I said then gave him a gentle nuzzle to the cheek which made him blushed.

“Alright, fine.”

“You’d really help us?” Lieutenant Muguet asked with a little surprise.

I nodded with a soft smile.

“Thank you, well if I was on my high horse before, it was because tonight we estimated that the thief would strike again.”

“What time do you think the thief will strike?”

“Since we’ve never actually seen the thief and haven’t found a trace of him, we believe he strikes at night when everypony has gone to sleep which would be the best time for him to sneak about without being detected, so we have a couple of hours yet. Hmm, since the pair of you are pegasi, this could actually work to our advantage. The thief might not think to look up during his next raid so while he’s busy with his eyes focused down here on the ground avoiding our patrols, you can spot him from the air and catch him in the act.”

“Alright, sounds good,”

“Thank you, and if we catch this thief, we can all sleep peacefully for once. Especially me.” The Lieutenant gave a tired groan and rubbed her eyes with a hoof before stumbling back into her tent.

XXXXX

As the hours passed and the sun finally set, plunging the Marejave wasteland into darkness. The Desert Rangers acting as the guards for the settlement placed Light Crystals into small glass boxes on posts to simulate streetlamps, illuminating the settlement.

Fruity and I were flying circles around the settlement, keeping our eyes peeled for anything out of the ordinary. Despite the sun going down and there being no light apart from that coming from the settlement below, I could see pretty well. I suppose it had something to do with these new eyes Fruity said I was given during my upgrade giving me a sort of low light vision. I was actually thankful I wasn’t consciously aware of that part.

“What do we do, fly around in circles like a pair of idiots until dawn?” Fruity asked, sounding a little annoyed.

“Not quite how I’d put it but, pretty much yeah.” I replied, taking my eyes off the ground to answer him.

“We keep flying until one of us spots this thief and we swoop down to grab him.”

“Easy for you to say love I can’t see a bloody thing!” I couldn’t help myself, with a roll of my eyes I let a small giggle escape before returning my gaze to the ground below.

Suddenly, there was a yell from below and a door burst open from one of the shacks close to the gap in the rock wall with a pony yelling to high heaven.

“What in blue blazes?!” Fruity gasped in shock from the sudden outburst and we both immediately diverted our attention to the commotion.

“I SAW YOU, YOU LITTLE BASTARD, GET BACK HERE WITH MY CARROTS AND BEANS!” An elderly stallion yelled as he tried to chase after something. Following the direction of the stallion I saw a small fast moving shape running for the gap in the rock wall.

“That’s our thief,” I said.

“Ok, sorry I doubted you, let’s get ‘em,”

“Woah there Wonderbolt, let’s follow him, find out where he hides out, maybe we can also return some of the stolen stuff,” I suggested.

“Heh, ok,”

“CELESTIA THIEVING BASTARD, WHEN I GET MY HOOVES ON YOU, I’M GONNA RING YOUR SCRAWNY LITTLE NECK!” The elderly stallion continued to rave as we flew over the rock wall just as our culprit left the settlement and began to run up into the hills beyond.

Settlers that were disturbed by the old pony’s shouting were coming out to see what was going on, and it would seem he was spreading the word that he’d spotted the thief as angry shouts began to fill the night air. Ponies began to run back and forth in a frenzy as they started to gather lanterns, guns and miscellaneous objects they could use as melee weapons in preparation to pursue the suspect.

“We better find this thief before a whole angry mob starts galloping up the mountain.”

“And with all the things that comes out at night, they’ll be easy pickings,” My companion said with concern.

I nodded and we beat our wings as hard as we could to propel ourselves faster as we pursued the fleeing target.

“How do you think he did it huh? After two years of nopony being able to catch him that old fart just happens to catch the thief red hooved?” Fruity whispered just loud enough for me to hear over the wind.

“A mixture of paranoia and insomnia I guess?” I suggested not entirely sure or caring at the moment.

“Hmm, I guess I can accept the old codger being paranoid,” Fruity said. “But damn did he have a mouth on him,”

I giggled quietly as we watched the tiny suspect run towards the rocky wall of a mountain side that was no more than a few hundred feet away from Bonbon Springs. We followed the thief a little longer until we saw that there was a cave in the rocky wall and our suspect ran inside.

“No way, you have got to be kidding me! The thief was only two minutes away from them?!” Fruity cried in disbelief. Yeah, it was hard to believe they never found the thief’s hideout if it was so close. Then again, until now none of them had ever actually seen him so it would be understandably hard to track someone who comes and goes completely unnoticed back to their hideout.

“Well, I think now’s the best time to apprehend our thief,” I said as I swooped down and landed on the stone platform in front of the cave entrance.

Fruity and I entered side by side, spreading our wings to block their escape. “We know you’re in here, come on out.” I yelled.

“And don’t try anything funny.” Fruity added to which I gave him a sharp glare, a thief who relied so heavily on sneaking that they’d flee if they were caught clearly wasn’t armed.

We heard no reply or any attempt to flee or mount a counter attack; we began to think our thief had a back door until the cave opened up into a larger space with no other caverns or exits, only rather a well maintained campsite littered with old packages and empty tin cans occupied said space. Dangling from the entrance to this larger area was a string and a dozen tin cans had been tied to it.

“Our thief put together a jangler out of these old cans, Raiders usually make these as an early warning system, crude but effective noise makers,” Fruity said as he gently pulled it down.

Once the noise maker was out of our way we stepped into the cave’s camp. It was quiet save the dull whistle of the wind from outside blowing in through the entrance behind us.

“Fruity, keep the exit blocked, I’m going to try to find our thief,” I said.

The purple pegasus nodded as he crouched low and spread his wings to their full extent.

I meanwhile, slowly looked around the camp, looking over all the empty food packages and cartons as I passed by and trampled over them.

Then something caught my eye towards the tent that had been setup inside the cave next to a small fire pit. Lying against the tent flap was a small worn stuffed animal, a foal’s toy. What’s a toy like that doing in here? As I drew closer to the tent the sounds of sniffling soon caught my attention, fearing our thief had stole more than just food, I quickly flung the tent flap open only to be caught completely off guard by what screamed and hid under a sleeping bag.

A filly, a black stripped zebra filly. We saw no evidence of anypony else here, this cave wasn’t that big so an adult pony or zebra could be seen easily. It all made sense now, the thief, who had only stolen food and drinks, had to be this little filly.

There was no mistake, it had to be as she was the only one we saw as we followed her into the cave and right now she was terrified.

“Hey, hey, its ok, I’m not going to hurt you,” I said softly, hoping to sooth the filly’s fears.

“What have you found?” Fruity called.

“A filly,” I replied.

“You’re shitting me, right?” Fruity cried in surprise.

I had to shush him and try again a couple more times before the young filly poked her head out from under the sleeping bag and looked up at me with big scared green eyes. The filly was young, I think around eight to ten years old by the looks of her. Her mane was a mess but it seems she had been able to keep herself clean; perhaps there is a source of clean water nearby so she could at least bath. Like pre-war zebras I remembered, she had some traditional piercings, just a couple of simple gold hoop earrings, one in each ear.

Please don’t hurt me,” She whimpered in a scared quiet voice.

Hurt you, oh, I wouldn’t even dream of hurting you. I could never harm a foal,” I replied, feeling hurt and disheartened that this filly would think I’d even consider bringing harm to her. Is that how bad society is now that even children suffer the brutality of this wasteland?

“Since when could you speak gobbledygook?” Fruity asked as he approached. The sight of him made the young filly hide under the sleeping bag again.

“Huh?” I asked as I turned to face him.

“You just spoke her language.” He answered while gesturing to the shivering mass.

“I, what?”

“Ugh, you spoke in Zebra language, like it was natural to you, didn’t you even notice?”

I blinked dumbfounded. “Wait, you’re telling me she was speaking another language to you?” I asked trying to understand.

“Yeah, how could you not tell she was speaking mumbo jumbo?”

I stared, wide eyed. I didn’t even register she spoke another language to me. She sounded as if she was speaking fluent Equestrian.

“D-do you think it has something to do with what I am?” I asked, my heart rate picking up at the implications.

Fruity looked down in thought for a moment before meeting my gaze again. “The computer from before did say you were an Infiltrator, I suppose you could have some sort of translation thing, I dunno.” He speculated but it did sound rather plausible, “But we can worry about that later, right now we got a filly to deal with,”

“Right,” I replied nodding. He had a point, I could worry about what else I could do as a machine later on but right now this filly needed us. I gently picked up the sleeping bag with my teeth and pulled it off the filly; she yipped in fright and curled up as I deposited the old sleeping bag to one side. The filly seemed to be at a decent size and weight so at least she wasn’t malnourished and looked healthy. Her flank was bare so she was young enough to have not found her calling or the circumstances that had her in this cave may have delayed her getting her mark. It was a bit heart breaking to see this young filly so scared of us.

I gently reach out and gently began to rub her shoulders, applying just enough pressure so that my touch was gentle and not too hard or forceful. It was then that I realised that I could now feel how much strength I could put into my limbs. When we deal with this I’m going to need to seriously try to look into what was done to me, like see if I have some sort of update report or something.

Shh, it’s ok, we’re not going to hurt you,” I cooed to the filly, lowering myself down to my chest and tucking my legs in under me so I could be at eye level with her. “My name is Crystal, what’s yours?” I asked softly.

“This switching between Equestrian and gibberish is going to drive me up the wall,” Fruity whispered. I gently nudged him with a wing to shut him up.

The young zebra looked up at me with big teary eyes. She stared at me for a long moment before she whimpered. “X-Xian, my n-name is X-Xian,

I gave a soft smile as I gently stroked her messy mane. “It’s nice to meet you Xian, this is my friend and companion Fruity, he’s a good guy, a little goofy but he means well,” I said smiling softly as I introduced her to my purple friend.

“I heard my name, what did you say?” He asked with his ears perked up from the mention of his name.

“Nothing really, just introduced her to you, that’s all,”

“Oh,”

I turned back to the filly and while keeping a gentle expression I asked. “Have you been stealing stuff from the ponies in Bonbon Springs?

Her eyes went wide and she immediately locked up and began to shake in fright.

Hey, hey, hey, shhhhhh, it’s ok, we’re not going to hurt you,” I said soothingly. “Are we, Fruity?” I asked turning to him.

“Huh?” He asked confused since he couldn’t understand what I’ve been saying to Xian.

“We’re not going to hurt her are we?” I repeated for him.

“Oh, no of course we wouldn’t hurt you,” He said looking to the filly.

I smiled and then directed that smile to the filly. “We can help you if you tell us the truth,

Tears began to trickle down her cheeks before she openly began to cry. I couldn’t resist pulling her into a comforting hug, it was such a painful sight to see this filly cry. “Hey, its ok, we won’t be mad if you did, we promise,” I whispered to her.

Xian sniffled as she gently wrapped her hooves around my chest, a part of me was scared she would feel the metal beneath but I buried that fear for now as the filly demanded my attention more than anything right now. “I-I did, but I only took enough so I wouldn’t go hungry,” She blubbered. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,”

“I don’t see any other sleeping accommodations or anything… this filly is on her own,” Fruity observed as he looked around the tent and cave again.

I blinked and looked around, he was right; Xian’s sleeping bag was the only one. There was no other evidence of anypony or zebra else being here with her. My heart sunk like a lead weight at the implications of this and I dreaded the answer to my next question.

Xian, where are your parents?”

Already upset from us finding her and uncovering her as the thief, she began to cry tenfold as her emotions skyrocketed from memories that were brought back up to the surface of her mind. She sniffled and cried with fresh tears while I held her gently, softly rubbing her back in an attempt to help her calm down. It took a good few minutes but eventually she calmed down enough to respond.

They, they are dead, they, died three years ago during the at-attack on our old camp,” She whimpered.

Oh dear sweet Celestia, this poor filly had been alone for that long and not only that her parents were killed during the attack on the Illustrious Moon Tribe that once occupied Bonbon Springs. But why was she still here and how has she managed to survive this long by herself? These were questions I voiced to her.

I was abandoned by my tribe, they, they called me a cursed foal because both my parents got killed,” She sniffled. I could feel my heart breaking for this little filly; nopony or zebra should have to go through that. “I had been taught basic survival from my daddy but after a year monsters appeared in the hills near some berry bushes and small fruit trees growing up here so I couldn’t feed myself that way anymore. Th-that’s why I started sneaking into the pony settlement for food,” She explained.

I hugged her tighter while I repeated her story to Fruity.

“Shit, poor filly,”

“We gotta help her,” I said while looking down at the sniffling Xian.

“Like how?”

“She can’t stay here, that pony nearly caught her tonight and I bet he’ll be riling everypony up into a tizzy, you saw their faces when they saw me,”

“What, do you think, he’ll gather everypony up with torches and pitchforks?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,”

“So what do we do?”

I looked down at the filly and felt my resolve about helping her strengthen. “We take her with us. Sure it won’t be ideal, but with her with us at least we can look out for her and she won’t have to be alone anymore,” I said stroking her mane.

“Take her with us, are you nuts?”

“Would you rather we leave her to be found by those ponies, with how angry they are from all the times she’s stolen from them, they’ll kill her, they won’t care if she’s a filly. You saw how they reacted to me just walking in.”

Fruity opened his mouth to argue further but closed it with a sigh. “You’re right, ugh; to be honest I don’t think I could sleep at night knowing I left this filly alone without knowing that she’ll be ok,”

I smiled and gave Fruity a peck on the cheek. “We’ll be the best chance she has for now,”

“What do we do now?” Fruity asked.

“We have to take her back with us to Bonbon Springs and to Lieutenant Muguet so we can tell her that the theft problem has been dealt with. From there we can then leave and head back to New Pegasus for our train ride back to Manehattan,”

Fruity nodded as he got up and headed for the cave exit.

Xian, you can’t stay here anymore, you do know that right?” I asked.

The young filly looked up at me, her green eyes red from crying. “What do you mean?

You were seen, how do you think we found you? Those settlers down there are really, really angry over the trouble you’ve caused and now that one of them has seen you, you won’t be able to hide out here for much longer. Fruity and I have decided that we’ll look after you from now on; we’ll take you with us, away from here and keep you safe. I know it’s not going to be easy but I’d rather we do this than you staying here alone any longer for something bad to happen to you. Would you be happier to come with us?” I asked.

Xian stared at me for a long while, thinking about what I’d said. She was scared, no doubt about that but it was also true that she couldn’t stay here. Eventually the young zebra filly nodded her head.

I smiled softly. “Don’t worry, you’ll be ok, I promise I’ll look after you.” I said.

What the buck am I doing promising a filly that when I wasn’t even a fully-fledged pony myself anymore? I shook my head to dispel that thought as I let the filly go and stood up. “We’ll have to go to the settlement first to let them know you won’t be stealing anymore but I swear you won’t be harmed. I won’t let them touch you,

She whimpered when I said we’d have to go back to Bonbon Springs but she didn’t protest. “Gather your things Xian, and any of the food you haven’t eaten yet so we can return it,

The zebra filly sniffled as she got up and began to gather a few items together. All in all there was just a small selection of food she gathered, but the surprising thing was her possessions. She didn’t have anything but that stuffed animal toy, nothing else. I would have thought she might have had some form of barding or maybe something of her parents but no, just the toy, oh the poor dear.

I called Fruity over to pick up the stolen food since he had the pockets and then lowered myself to lay down on my stomach again.

Climb onto my back Xian,” I requested softly. Xian timidly climbed up onto my back and snuggled down between my wings. I stood up and unfurled my wings, smiling when I looked back to check on her and make sure that; One she was comfortable on my back and two, my large wings hid her from view which is good since we didn’t want her to be seen for the moment. “Hold on tight now, we’ll be back at the settlement in just a few minutes, we are going to see a Ranger before we leave,” I told her as we began to walk and left her cave.

XXXXX

We noticed a fairly large gathering of ponies in the main area of the settlement as we returned and Fruity was right. A couple of ponies were yelling and the rest of the crowd were shouting in unison while pumping torches and pitchforks into the air, most though hoisted lanterns, rifles and assorted bits of junk like scraps of pipe and planks of wood, the occasional baseball bat caught my eye. All the while several members of the Desert Rangers were trying to calm them down rather unsuccessfully.

“An angry mob, not good,” Fruity muttered as we entered the settlement on hoof.

“Let’s just get to Lieutenant Muguet quickly,” I urged.

I made sure to keep my wings up and rigid to hide Xian as we ignored the crowd and made our way towards the slope. Sadly not everything can go smoothly.

“HEY, THERE’S THAT DAMN WINGED STRIPE,”

“Ponyfeathers,” I groaned.

“I BET SHE WAS IN LEAGUE WITH THAT LITTLE THIEF,” Another angry settler shouted and with that almost the entire crowd turned its attention on us, shouting curses, accusations and obscenities towards me.

BOOM!

A Desert Ranger standing close to the slope fired his 50cal AM Rifle into the night sky, silencing the crowd and thankfully drowning out the scared cry from Xian. Thankfully she didn’t jump off my back and run from the sudden loud bang.

“Alright, that’s enough! Everypony, back to your homes!” The Ranger yelled in irritation at the way the settlers deteriorated into an angry mob so quickly. He growled when no pony moved and with a nod to the other Rangers around the area, they lowered their weapons to aim just over the heads of the crowd. “NOW!” He demanded. Seeing where things were beginning to lead the angry mob began to slowly disperse but the tension was still very high.

“I don’t want to sound unwelcoming but the sooner you leave the better,” The Ranger that fired his rifle said.

“I’m sorry for any trouble we may be causing sir but we need to see Lieutenant Muguet, is she still in her tent?” I asked.

“Yes, make it quick,”

“Thank you,” I said and we quickly ran up the hill to the command tents and over to the one with the metal doorframe. I didn’t waste any time as I knocked on the door as soon as I approached it.

The door flew open after the second knock with a red faced Lieutenant Muguet. “WHAT?” She screamed but then her face contorted into confusion before switching to regret. “Oh Luna, I’m sorry, after the sighting of the thief the populace was going ape shit crazy and it was driving me mad.” She sighed. “Did you find anything?”

“It’s ok and yes,” I said and turned my body slightly and gently retracted my wings to my sides, revealing the shivering and scared Xian to the Desert Ranger LT. “This is your thief,”

“An Illustrious Moon Filly?” The Lieutenant gasped.

I nodded and then told her Xian’s story. The mare listened intently, even asking for me to repeat myself at certain points to clarify what I said. When I told her that the filly lost her parents during the attack on the Illustrious Moon Tribe camp that was here originally, a look of deep regret fell upon her face which changed into a look of understanding when I told her she was forced to start stealing food to survive because of threatening monsters where she used to get food.

“It’s our fault,” The Ranger sighed as she looked down at the terrified filly. “I know this doesn’t mean much now young one but we of the Desert Rangers are truly sorry for what befell you that day; I hope you can forgive us for what happened. It truly was a communication error that lead to that regretful slaughter.”

Xian looked up at Lieutenant Muguet with trembling eyes for a moment before she whimpered and lowered her head back down looking away from the mare.

Lieutenant Muguet sighed. “I hope she’ll forgive us in time. If we had known she was left behind we would have taken her in, despite what she is, no foal deserves to be abandoned like that,” She sighed again but more deeply this time. “If things were different here, if the atmosphere was more calm and the ponies not wronged by the Illustrious Moon tribe I’d offer to look after her but right now I’d fear for her safety.”

“I know, we had a warm welcome,” I said with a hint of sarcasm. “I intend to take her with us; I don’t think I can sleep at night knowing she isn’t being looked after properly,”

The Ranger in charge nodded. “That’s noble of you.”

“Now that the theft problem is taken care of and some of the food returned, would you happen to know another way around the mountain to get back to New Pegasus without going over it? We can’t risk running into Paradores especially with the filly, since we don’t have the weaponry to deal with them.” I asked.

“Hmm, there is an old railway line that’s at the bottom of the cliffs behind Bonbon Springs here that’ll go all the way to New Pegasus and will cut through the mountain via a tunnel…”

“I think it’ll be best if we left now,” Fruity said as he stepped up to me and laid a wing over my back, also gently laying it over Xian’s at the same time.

“You think so?” I asked.

“Considering that the ponies of this settlement are a smouldering pot just waiting to burst into flame at the smallest of flickers, I think it would be best if we bugger off now while everypony is back in their homes.”

“Hmmm, yeah, considering I’ve not done anything wrong and they are shouting obscenities at me and accusing me as well, I think you’re right,” I nodded and then turned to Lieutenant Muguet. “Thank you for letting us know about the rail line, we’ll be out of your mane as soon as possible.”

She smiled lightly. “No, thank you for helping us solve our problem. Hopefully now, I’ll get some peace and quiet around her. Have a safe journey you three.”

“Thank you, see you later,” I said with a modest tip of the black stetson on my head, we walked out of the tent. I raised my wings again just in case any of the ponies were still out and about and to minimise any drama we’d encounter as we left.

“YEAH THAT’S RIGHT, FUCKING LEAVE AND DON’T COME BACK YOU STRIPED BUCKING WHORE!” Somepony shouted from behind us.

I gasped in utter disbelief and horror. I’ve never, ever once been called something so degrading. To think somepony could call me that after doing nothing wrong to them, just how far has this world fallen since the war ended?

“Why that no good, big mouth wanker!” Fruity snarled with a face of pure fury. I’ve only seen him look this angry once before and that was when he came back after I was revealed to him to be mostly machine. He began to turn around and I quickly grabbed his foreleg with my nano-fibre tail.

“It’s not worth it Fruity, it’s just name calling,” I said sadly.

He stared at me for a moment before he sighed. “I’m sorry but, I couldn’t take it anymore, all those insults being directed at you, it was infuriating,”

I smiled as he let me know he cared about me. I’m happy to know we were somewhat growing closer as a couple. I leaned over and gave his cheek a light kiss. “You’re a good pony Fruity,”

“I try,” He said with a smile as his wings sprang up.

As we reached the bottom of the hill and began to walk around the base of the rocky cliffs that Bonbon Springs was built on the moon cast its soft lunar light onto the desert. It didn’t take long for us to find the old broken railway and after turning back west towards New Pegasus we began to follow the line between the cliffs until we came across the tunnel that Lieutenant Muguet mentioned.

“Well, here we go,” I said as I began for the tunnel.

“Whoa, hold up, you got a kid to protect, let me go ahead with my Q-Modulator,” Fruity insisted as he took the lead with his plasma rifle out and at the ready, hovering in the air so he could hold it with his two front hooves.

“Good idea,” I agreed, following close behind Fruity as we entered the dark tunnel.

It’s so dark,” Xian whimpered as she scooted foreward and wrapped her forelegs around my neck.

Don’t worry, I’m here,” I whispered softly to her as we entered the dark foreboding tunnel.

“Since she’s coming with us, we seriously need to teach her Equestrian because this constant shifting between languages is going to drive me mental,” Fruity complained while he hovered ahead of us, being illuminated by his green glowing plasma rifle.

“Oh stop complaining,” I giggled lightly. “I’m sure we can start teaching her on the train,”

“Speaking of train, what’s this?” Fruity asked as his rifle’s glow illuminated the rotten wood and rusted metal frame of a train car up ahead.

We cautiously approached the old four wheeled car and found that it was a large box like car with two open ends at the front and back with openings to allow entry at the front and back on the sides. My eyes widened when I realised what we were looking at.

“Oh, this is a Brake Van, usually found at the front and back of freight trains,” I said and then peered up the rails ahead. The glow from Fruity’s rifle uncovered a long train of open top wagons that seemed to have their side’s brutally torn open as they were splintered apart.

“What the hell happened here?” Fruity asked as he raised his rifle to try to spread its light further.

“I don’t know but it looks like somepony ripped open the sides of these wagons to get at what was in them, likely coal as this was a coal train,” I said as I looked at what remained on the side panelling.

“Yeah, ponies could have rioted over the coal here.”

With a sigh, we continued onwards until we found the locomotive at the head of the train. It was a familiar kind to me. One I’d often see back in my pre-war days. It was a 2-8-0 known as a Big Mac Class. They were known for their pulling power and reliability. Probably why Equestria requested that hundreds of them be made during the war to ferry supplies and troops around the country.

“Bollocks, since the train is taking up most of the tunnel my rifle isn’t really acting like a good enough light source,” Fruity complained as we cautiously walked away from the train.

“Oh wait, my Pip-Buck has a torch, I nearly forgot about that.” I chirped and began to concentrate on activating the light.

“Crystal, No!” Fruity cried but it was too late as most of the tunnel around us was illuminated in a bright white light. Unfortunately, as soon as the bright light bathed us in its light there was a loud piercing shriek from up ahead that was followed by more.

“Ah, cock and bollocks,” Fruity shouted. “Ghouls!”

“Oh no, don’t worry Xian, I won’t let a single one of those monsters get you,”

The sound of thundering hooves began to echo throughout the tunnel as the feral ghouls were attracted to the bright light of my Pip-Buck. It wouldn’t do us much good to turn it off now since I’d practically rung the dinner bell for them and it would actually make things more difficult for us as we wouldn’t be able to see the threats until they would be nearly on top of us. My EFS wasn’t much good either since being in the tunnel the red bars were grouped together so they kept meshing together making it hard to tell just how many ghouls we had alerted.

“Fuck! Eat star matter!” Fruity yelled as he fired a burning ball of plasma at the first ghoul to appear in the light.

Hold on tight to me Xian,” I commanded as I put myself into a defensive stance, my wings flaring out widely to make myself look as large and threatening as possible. I realised quickly that I couldn’t really use my guns because I was low on ammo. Well the low ammo was true for the shotgun since all I had was what I salvaged with the gun, but I couldn’t exactly reload my revolver since Fruity now carried all my ammo since I’d lost my duster.

“Crystal, over there! Engineer’s service room!” Fruity pointed to an open door set into the wall of the tunnel just up ahead.

“Good call!” I called to him and I quickly began to run over to it while Fruity covered me, fluttering higher to get out of reach of the ghouls while he fired balls of burning death at them.

I skidded over the ballast on the ground as we came to the door and quickly charged through the door. The small room was illuminated by a small hanging light and held a few cabinets and several bits and pieces of junk related to maintenance. I lowered myself down to the floor to let Xian get off my back.

Hide in a corner Xian, I need to help Fruity,” I said as the filly got off me,

Please don’t leave me,” She pleaded with big scared eyes.

I could feel my heart breaking at her fear of being left alone. “I won’t leave you, I promise,”

MONSTER!” She screamed and backpedalled to the wall behind her. My ears twitched as I heard the clip clop of broken hooves behind me and quickly whirled around and put myself in front of Xian to defend her from the feral ghoul that had followed us in.

“Stay away from her,” I growled, spreading my wings again.

The undead pony opened its broken jaws and let loose an unearthly scream as it charged at me. Without the use of my guns, I was reduced to using my hooves but since I was more machine than pony, I could use my mechanical strength to my advantage. I could feel the tension rise in my legs, the power behind all the motors, the pistons, the servos, everything that controls the power in my legs. My unwanted upgrade must have had something to with this but I was glad I can feel how much power I’m putting into my limbs again and right now I wanted to unleash all I had to defend that poor filly. I flapped my wings to lift myself into the air and putting all my strength into my hindlegs I kicked out into the charging ghoul’s face. There was a sickening crunch as my mechanical strength kick crushed its skull and knocked it off its hooves and into the wall beside the door.

I looked back behind me to check on Xian and found her gawking at me when I landed back on my hooves. I smiled softly to her. “See, I won’t let them hurt you,” I said before another gurgle from a ghoul grabbed my attention.

“How many of you ankle biters are there?” Fruity whined from outside, still firing his rifle.

With a yell I charged forward and shoulder barged the feral ghoul into the same wall as the one I just took down and crushed him using my extreme weight. As I stepped back to put myself in front of Xian the monster’s broken body slumped to the floor. Sadly, more ghouls were beginning to enter the room and like the first two I would charge at them to crush them or hit them hard enough to break something vital. One ghoul ignored me completely and went for the weakest prey in the room, Xian. Realizing its intent, I couldn’t let it get her and I lashed out with my nano-fibre tail and wrapped it around the ghoul’s neck. It gagged and gargled with its throat constricted and with a yank I pulled it off its hooves and threw it to the floor before stomping on its head with a hind hoof.

“Fruity, we need to get out of here! There are too many of them!” I yelled as I punched another ghoul in the side of the head and cringed at feeling its skull collapse on impact.

“I know!” he called back, looking around as he thought of a way for us to get out of here. “Ok uh, when you get a moment, grab the kid and fly, they can’t reach us up here, we’ll have to fly out,” Fruity shouted back. “Oh horseapples, not now!”

“What happened?”

“My piece of shit weapon has started to cock up again; it’s now or never!” He urged.

I turned to Xian and crouched down for her to climb back onto my back. “We have to go Xian, it’s too dangerous to stay here and there are too many ghouls for us to handle, quickly climb on and hold tight, we are leaving,

The filly nodded, her eyes still wide but beaming with amazement aswell as fear. She quickly climbed up onto my back and tightly hugged her forelegs around my neck again and held on tightly as I stood back up. Good job my airway is inside a reinforced tube, once she was safely on my back I stood up and turned to leave but found a couple of ferals stood in the door. I groaned but charged anyway.

“Excuuuuuuuusssseeee me!” I yelled as I barged through the two ghouls and with a kick off of the ground by my hind legs I launched myself into the air, opening my wings and began to flap to keep myself up. I was still feeling disturbed at how natural this flying behaviour is getting for me.

“There you are, thank Celestia the both of you are ok, nearly thought you got munched,” Fruity sighed with relief as he joined us.

“Not going to happen,” I said while I turned west. “Let’s get out of here,” And with a nod from Fruity we began beating our wings and began flying up the tunnel towards the exit. As we flew I became aware of a new power meter in my HUD as I flew. It was down to ninety three percent. Where did this other power meter come from, what did it mean? Looks like I have another thing to figure out later. After a good minute of flying through the tunnel and avoiding the ghouls as they attempted to jump at us, we finally burst out of the end of the tunnel and back out into the desert night air.

“Thank fuck for that,” Fruity sighed as we were in the clear.

“Let’s fly back to my house and get some rest before we go back to the train station tomorrow,” I suggested. “But let’s keep following the tracks; don’t want to attract any more unwanted attention,”

“Stopping off at your place sounds real good right about now,” Fruity agreed as we flew low to the ground, heading back to my old home after a long painful journey with an unexpected twist.

XXXXX

Nexus stood on the cliff high above the railway looking down into the valley as he watched the three miss matched equines headed towards the tunnel directly below his perch. He held back to be sure he couldn’t be seen if his target looked up but thankfully they remained unaware of his presence. He was puzzled as to why the Mark 1 had rescued and decided to take the zebra filly with it. He was becoming more curious with its actions the more he observed, prompting it to continue following and observe it over trying to capture it.

“Well here we go,” I-01 said before being stopped by the purple pegasus stallion.

“Whoa, hold up, you got a kid to protect, let me go ahead with my Q-Modulator,” He said as he equipped his aforementioned weapon.

“Good idea,” The bionic mare agreed as it let him take the lead and soon followed close behind while also making sure the small filly on its back was ok.

Nexus watched until the three of them disappeared inside the tunnel and then he began to follow them from above, using his sensory system to track I-01’s power signature which became incredibly easier after the upgrade since the Mana Core gave off such a high power frequency. He decided to follow in a straight line which had him climbing the mountain the tunnel passed through, and as he reached about half way up he noticed that the power signature had stopped moving.

“Why have you stopped?” He wondered.

Nexus stopped and stared down at the ground where I-01 had stopped directly below him. He stood and waited for it to start moving again but while he waited his threat detector pinged and he looked up just in time to see a large bug like creature come flying towards him with its tail curled forward and its stinger poised to strike.

Biology identified, Paradore, post war mutation created from prolonged exposure to magical radiation. Paradores are fast and extremely deadly predatory insectoid beings, its primary weapon is its stinger tail,” Nexus was informed by an automatic alert from the Production Facility.

He quickly dropped and rolled to avoid the incoming bug as the Paradore dive bombed in order to hit him, his warning system giving him just enough time to narrowly avoid the attack, as the Paradore flew passed and back up into the air to poise itself for another attack, Nexus stood back up and pulled the semi-automatic riot shotgun he had acquired from a traveling trader who had panicked upon seeing him and attempted to shoot him, prompting him to defend himself. Holding the semi-automatic shotgun in his nano-fibre trail he spread his legs to steady his stance and aimed the weapon at the screeching bug as it came back for another attempt.

Feelings of fear began to rise in the machine, memories of the energy blast from the previous day that nearly lead to his death from overloading filled his mind. He could see the murderous intent in this large bug’s eyes, the hunger it held for pony flesh as well as its large open mouth full of sharp jagged teeth that seemed to salivate at the sight of him. He knew he was a fleshless robot, but this bug didn’t and it wanted to kill him. The last thing Nexus wanted to feel was that coldness as his mind nearly faded away. He narrowed his gaze on the bug, fully intent on surviving this night. The paradore screeched as it came within mere feet of its prey and then Nexus used his tail to pull the trigger three times, sending three shells of 12gauge buckshot into the mutated abomination at short range. The powerful blasts of lead tore through a wing, a section of the torso and a large chunk of the abdomen out. It let out a pained cry and died shortly after, but at this close range Nexus didn’t have time to dodge as the dead bug crashed into him and for the first time since waking up he felt pain, a piercing pain in his side.

He groaned as he picked himself back up, pushing the dead carcass of the paradore off of him and cringed as he felt something sharp lodged into his side. He turned to his side and to his surprise found the stinger stuck in his riot combat armour, not only that it had even managed to pierce an inch into his titanium alloy torso. Once he placed his shotgun back on his back, he wasted no time in grabbing the stinger with his tail and yanking it out.

“Interesting, I can feel simulated pain from piercing blows. I must try to avoid situations like this in the future,” He noted while pocketing the stinger, thinking it might be useful later.

Looking back towards the ground he found that his target had begun moving again and so he began to follow again but also keeping some of his attention on his EFS’s threat detector. He didn’t want to be taken by surprise again.

XXXXX

“Razzle, target is moving,” Unit 2 said as he came to a stop.

“I can feel it Buckshot, it seems to be moving due west. What’s in its direction of travel that could be a likely destination?” Unit 1 asked as it stepped up to stand beside its companion.

“Accessing local map data, cross referencing with current geological data, hmm, most likely destination in direction of travel would be either New Pegasus or the slum town outside it known as Hayside, Corporal,”

“Very good, it would seem Hayside would be our best bet, if I-01 is going for New Pegasus it would need to go through there first. We can ambush it along the way,”

Unit 2 nodded in agreement.

“Double time, the Mark 1 is moving fast,”

The two disguised robots broke into a mechanical strength aided gallop, running as fast as their robotic limbs would allow them as they changed direction to run towards New Pegasus, the shining city acting like a beacon in the middle of the night.

XXXXX

We made it back to my old house as the morning sun began to bathe the land in its welcoming glow. It was nice to see Xian to be so enthralled with her surroundings it distracted her from the other ponies we passed along the way. She was looking around with big curious eyes while we passed through Hayside. I had to supress a chuckle when Xian’s eyes bulged to the size of dinner plates when her eyes took in the sight of New Pegasus when it came into view. It was clear this young filly had never left the mountain area of Bonbon Springs and had never seen a built up city like New Pegasus before. She was nearly sat on my head as she climbed up onto her hind hooves, using my head to prop herself up while she looked around with curiosity, it was rather cute. When we neared my house with the sun coming up I asked Fruity to check on the status of the train.

Xian sat on my bed, curiously prodding at the old mattress while I sat in front of my dresser.

Did you sleep on this?” The young zebra filly asked while she poked at a rather lumpy looking spot.

I did, before the bombs fell this used to be my house and this was my bedroom,” I replied as I pulled open the draw and smiled as I looked upon my harmless fetish.

You were alive before the Ignis Ex Infernum happened?” She asked in surprise, pressing her hoof into the lump.

Yes, I was, um, it’s a complicated story,” I sighed. I understood what she meant, in most cases names don’t usually get translated so that name she said was likely what the Zebras called the megaspell bombardment they suffered in retaliation to their balefire missile bombardment of Equestria. I picked out a set of pink striped hind leg socks to replace my currently ruined blue striped socks. I gently took off my now dirty and scratched up hoof shoes and while sitting on my rump I extended one of my hind legs out to begin removing the ruined sock.

There was suddenly a slight tearing sound followed by a ping which was then followed by a startled yelp from Xian. I looked up to see the filly pressed up against the headboard of my bed, panting in fright and staring at a hole in the mattress where a spring had shot out, which was now embedded in my ceiling.

Are you ok?” I asked softly as she slumped down onto her barrel as she calmed down.

Yes, it just startled me is all,” She whimpered quietly.

It would seem quite a lot of things these days are falling apart,” I commented as I pulled off my socks from my hind legs. I sighed with relief when I took off the socks that covered my right hind leg, since I wore a hind leg sock and both foreleg socks together on the same leg to hide it while it regenerated. It was good to see the leg completely whole again. I began to slip on the pink striped socks when I heard the front door open and close.

“Fruity?” I called out.

“Yeah it’s me,” He called back up.

“Is everything ok?” I asked; worry beginning to develop in the pit of my stomach at the thought of maybe missing the train.

“Slate said the train is scheduled to depart by tonight, we’ll have enough time to catch some sleep and rest up,” He said as he fluttered onto the landing just outside my door and walked in. “Hey, what’s up with the kid?” He asked noticing Xian lay by the headboard.

“A spring burst out of the bed and spooked her,” I replied while I pulled up my socks and slipped on my hoof shoes again.

He looked at the filly with concern. “Are you sure we should be taking her with us? I mean sure I don’t want to see a kid get hurt or anything but we’ll be heading to a place worse than this soon?”

I stood up and looked over to the filly as she looked up to us, ears twitching as we were talking about her. I leaned close to Fruity and spoke quietly. “From what you’ve told me about this world, she’d be no better anywhere else right now than with us. At least with us she’ll have somepony to depend on and look out for her,” I whispered.

“I guess you’re right. Well, I’m gonna go and grab a cloud and take a nap before we head for the train, I’m knackered,” He said with a yawn.

“Oh before you go, can you drop off one of the suits of armour we found in that house? I want to make some straps for them so I can start wearing some new armour since my last outfit got shredded,”

“Sure,” He replied with another yawn as he began to pull out the sections of armour from his magic pockets. Once all the sections were on the floor he left out the front door to fly up to grab a cloud lazily floating along in the sky.

I had enough segments of armour to cover my chest, shoulders, knees and flanks. They would all need a good scrubbing and the old straps would need removing before a new set could be added.

Making sure that Xian would be ok in my room for a few minutes while I went down stairs, I went into the kitchen and retrieved a knife and found that the washing machine had a curtain inside it. I suppose my mother was in the process of washing the curtains before the end happened. Thankfully, while being inside the washer the curtain hadn’t been affected much by the elements and retained much of its integrity so I decided to use it for the replacement material for the straps.

My heart melted when I returned to my room. The little zebra filly had fallen asleep next to the headboard and was quietly snoring, making the most adorable little sounds I’ve ever heard. I put down my materials and pulled the old blanket over the filly and stroked her messy mane.

Sleep well, Xian,” I whispered before I went to work making straps.

XXXXX

We woke up with plenty of time to get ready and then make our way to the train station. I dressed in my refurbished pieces of combat armour. I spent an hour or so after I got the curtain, cutting it into strips and replacing the old straps with the new fabric. Fruity and I strode through the streets of Hayside as we walked towards the train station, passing several ponies that stopped and stared as they noticed the nervous filly clinging to my back but more importantly they stared at me and my extended wings. As we passed Broadwalk and turned onto a road that’d take us straight to the station, I began to get that feeling like we were being watched again. My ears began to flick back and forth as I tried to listen out for anything unusual and also began to look up and down each and every gap between buildings we passed.

“Are you ok?” Fruity asked after several minutes of me looking around.

“I feel like we are being watched again,” I whispered.

“Well you do have a black stripe zebra filly on your back and you didn’t have wings the last time you were here,” He reasoned just as the station came into view.

“I’m getting a bad feeling about this though, Fruity,” I replied and quickened my pace.

The station was surprisingly packed with ponies waiting to board the “Dashing Pegasus” train service to Manehattan. The large blue steam engine sat before the platform with its long train behind it, some of the Pullmare cars were replaced with standard passenger cars because some of them were damaged after the streamlined locomotive exploded. I smiled from the strong sense of nostalgia I felt from all those years ago of waiting for this train to take me and my family to the Crystal Empire.

What is that?” A quiet voice asked from my back.

Huh, oh, this is a train Xian, and we are going to be riding it,” I said with a warm smile to put her fears at ease.

Suddenly there was a loud blast from the steam whistle which startled the young filly, making her yelp and nearly fall off my back as we began to climb up onto the platform. I shot Fruity a glare as he was snickering.

It’s not going to hurt you, it’s driven by ponies, it can’t hurt anypony,” I reasoned.

“I can’t help but feel like you just told her a load of bollocks,” Fruity said.

“Shut it,” I hissed. “She doesn’t need to know what happened to the last one,”

Ponies began to murmur as we began to worm our way through the crowd. Some ponies were getting a bit uneasy with me and Xian around, muttering things about a Stripe along with other foul things that made me frown.

We managed to find a spot on the platform away from any large grouping of ponies. It would probably be best as to not make them feel uncomfortable, don’t want them to get trigger happy, especially with Xian here. Speaking of uncomfortable, I couldn’t shake that feeling I was being watched. I craned my neck looked around, trying to see if anypony was looking my way but couldn’t see anypony looking at me. I did see a pair of ponies dressed in old Equestrian Military gear on the opposite side of the platform being questioned by one of the platform guards but other than that I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary, well ordinary for today’s world. Never seen ponies dressed like them before but the guard looks a little intimidated, like he knowns them or at least recognises the uniform.

“Ah, you made it.” Marshall Slate greeted with a smile as he approached us from the crowd of scowling ponies. “We’ll be boarding in a couple of minutes,”

I smiled at the familiar face. “Thank you Marshall, um, who are those in pre-war Equestrian Military uniforms?” I asked in curiosity.

“Don’t get mixed up with them Crystal, they are part of a growing mercenary group called the Gunners. They use military training and tactics to get their jobs done; it’s proving to be an effective combination. As long as you don’t bother them, they shouldn’t bother you, especially on the train since it’ll be us that govern who stays on board after an incident,”

The Dashing Pegasus unleashed another blast from its whistle and released a jet of steam from the copper piping from below its cylinders. As the steam began to clear I thought I saw a dark shape dart across in front of the locomotive and disappear around the other side. It happened so fast I thought the steam cloud played tricks with my eyes.

“Alright, everypony, all aboard,” Marshal shouted as the passenger car doors opened to allow everypony on.

Slowly the small crowd began to herd onto the train and eventually we boarded. We walked down the corridor of the Pullmare composite car and opened the first available door to the first free compartment we came across and entered it. It was just as lavishly furnished as I remembered. We closed the door to our compartment before we sat down on a bench each, Xian got off my back and sat on the bench beside me, looking around the luxurious space with wide curious eyes.

“ALL ABOARD!” I heard the acting conductor shout a few minutes later which was then followed by another whistle from the locomotive and then a sudden jerk. Xian yelped in surprise and fear to which I had to reassure her that everything was fine and then she resumed looking in wonder out the window as the train began to pull away from the station.

“Fruity, should I tell her what I really am?” I asked in a quiet but serious tone.

He looked down in deep thought for a little while before he looked up and sighed. “It isn’t ideal but to be honest I would tell her now rather than later, she’s just a kid and she’s already taken a shine to you. If you don’t tell her and let her believe you are a normal zebra, err, pega-zebra, or whatever, like I did, it’ll be worse for her when she finds out,” He replied while looking at the filly as she stood on her hind hooves now so she could get a better look out the window and the passing scenery.

“You’re right,” I agreed. The last thing I would want to do to this poor filly is break her heart in the future by revealing to her that I’ve been a lie, best tell her what I am now so we can work through this now while we can. I took a deep breath and turned to the young filly. “Xian,” I called, she turned around and sat down, looking up at me expectantly. “This may be difficult to understand or believe but I have something very important to tell you about myself,

XXXXX

“I sense another power signature on this train, it seems I-02 IS has stowed away on board somewhere,” Unit 2 said quietly as he walked alongside his companion. “We were given orders to eliminate it, should we take care of it after we identify the Mark 1’s location?”

“Negative, we are on an enclosed space and uncovering this malfunctioning unit will jeopardize our primary objective,” Unit 1 answered as it stopped outside a closed cabin door.

“What do we do?”

“Monitor it for now, but we can’t let it get in our way either,” Unit 1 said as it stared at the door number. “Cabin 054. When the train arrives in Manehattan, we’ll have to be ready to capture I-01.”


Bonus images.

Infiltrator Mark 2 Unit 1000

Xian

Pega-Zebra Crystal

Chapter 11: Back on Track

View Online

Fallout Equestria: Influx

Chapter 11: Back on Track

By the morning after we boarded the train we had passed the mountains separating the Marejave from mainland Equestria, and we fell under the oppressive cloud cover that blankets the rest of the Equestrian Wasteland. Everything was rather dull in the cabin as I was jolted awake when the train ran over a rough section of track. I groaned as I groggily pushed myself up into a sitting position and blinked my tired eyes. It took a minute for my tired mind to remember where I was and why the room felt like it was rocking from side to side. I smiled to myself when I remembered that we were on the train heading back to Manehattan, but then frowned when I realised that the gentle rocking motion of the train wouldn’t lull me back to sleep since I was now wide awake. With a sigh, I leaned back in my seat and eeped when I felt the gentle touch of another pony against me.

Xian lay beside me, curled up into a ball and her head was gently rested against my flank like it was a pillow. I smiled and gently stroked her messy mane with my forehoof while she slept soundly. There was then another rough clickity clack as the train ran other another rough section, which drew a snort from Fruity on the opposite bench. He was lying flat on his back with his hat over his face and muzzle. A wing drooped over the edge of the seat while he snored.

With nothing to do while my friend and young charge slept, I looked around the cabin for something to entertain myself with. My eyes fell upon my left wing. The primary feathers were slightly dishevelled and out of place from how I’d laid on it. I groaned with annoyance as I extended my wing and moved it forward so I could better reach it and gently began to run my lips and tongue across each feather, gently tugging them to ensure they were still good and pulling them back into place. Just as I managed to put half of my feathers back in place, a couple of them tickled my nose. I pulled my head back and wiggled my nose as I felt the sensation that I was about to sneeze, but thankfully after holding my breath for a few seconds it passed. I was about to resume my work before my brain finally woke up and caught up with what I was doing when I put a feather back in my mouth. It was then that I realised that I was doing, I was preening myself. Upon that realisation, I let out a quiet scream.

“I didn’t do it!” Fruity shrieked as he bolted up off his bench at my scream and fell onto the floor with a thud. Once his brain caught up with him he sat up, hoof rubbing his forehead and scowled at me. “Aww c’mon Crystal, I was in the middle of a lovely dream just then…” Anything else he was going to say died on his tongue as he stared at me, he eyes widening as he took in my horrified expression. “Hey, are you ok?”

I looked up at him, tears brimming in my eyes as I held out my half preened wing. “I was preening myself,” I choked out.

He blinked and wore a confused expression. “Um, did you accidentally pull out a good feather or something?” He asked with a shrug.

“Fruity!” I shrieked. “I was never taught how to preen and I found myself doing it like it was second nature,” I practically screamed at him.

“Shh, Xian is still sleeping,” He warned before raising his eyebrow at me. He stared at me with his raised eyebrow for a moment before his eyes widened as if in realisation. “The mental conditioning,” He breathed out quietly.

“What?”

“Back in the Upgrade Station, there was a section during the upgrade that said “Mental Conditioning” after the physical changes had been made. I guess it was the things you needed for a pegasus lifestyle. Flight knowledge, flight experience, probably even wing maintenance,” He theorised.

“I, I suppose you could be right but…I don’t like that it felt so natural for me to do. This was my first time doing it but the way I just went at it, it was like I’ve done it my whole life,” I whimpered, tears trickling down my cheeks now. “I hate this, I hate how I suddenly feel so different and yet not so different all at the same time. I know I’m not a pegasus, I know I’m not a zebra but I feel like I am…” Anything else I was about to vent ended in a choked out sob, and Fruity was quick to join me on our bench and embraced me with his forelegs, holding me tight.

“Shhh, it’ll be ok, I promise, I’ll help you through it. I swear it!” He promised as he held me firmly in his hooves. I broke down then. I buried my head in his shoulder and began to weep openly. “That’s it, let it all out,” He said soothingly.

I must have cried for a good hour, I think. Either way, I cried myself dry and felt extremely drained again, despite my primary power reading being above seventy percent. He let me go and I laid back down with a sigh.

“Hey, want owt from the dinning car or something?” He asked as he slid off the bench and stood up.

“Some water would be nice, thank you.”

“Alright, I’ll be back in a few,” He said and gently nuzzled my forehead before he left the cabin. I closed my eyes and let the gentle rocking of the train lull me back to sleep.

I can’t have been asleep for that long. I woke up probably only ten or so minutes later with Fruity shutting our cabin door.

“Eek!” Xian squealed as she was woken up by the door clicking shut. She sat up and looked around with terrified eyes, but when she saw who she was with she relaxed and slumped back down with a sigh. Poor dear, she was pretty scared of being in an unfamiliar environment. I could relate to her really, considering I only woke up into this world a few weeks ago and not where I remember falling asleep.

The most surprising thing of all however was how she took to the news about what I am. I told her my story and she didn’t seem scared of me like I expected her to, or think I was lying, making it all up. She did say it was surprising and a little intimidating, but because I didn’t act like the few robots she’s ever seen and that I act more like the ponies do, she felt I’m more pony than robot. That actually made me smile, to think this young filly that seemed to be scared of everything else outside of what she was familiar with was ok with me being a robot of sorts. Also I think being a zebra helped. Another thing maybe is that it also came down to first impressions, she got to know me as Crystal Éclair the Pegasus Zebra, got to see my personality, what I liked from the things I had in my house and saw my good side when I helped her instead of being aware of the machine inside first. Whatever the reason, I hope she remains feeling comfortable around me, I’d hate to drive her away because of this and I pray she never gets to see what’s under my skin and especially the SDP.

“Sorry, did I wake you?” Fruity asked the both of us.

“No, it’s ok but I think you closed the door a little too hard for Xian,” I said, sitting up with a yawn.

“Sorry kidder,”

The filly’s response was to scoot close to me, as if trying to hide behind me. How cute.

Fruity gave a half smile at that before he stood on his hind legs and used his mouth to tug down his Q-Modulator by its strap from the overhead compartment above the bench he has been using.

“What are you doing with that?” I asked as he slung the weapon.

“On the way back with your water,” Which I then noticed there was a bottle of water with two glasses sitting on a worn wooden tray on the table between the benches. He must have put it down right after closing the door and while I was waking up. “I bumped into Marshall Slate and was curious if the guards on this train had a way to maintain their weapons,”

I nodded as I followed along and used my nano-fibre tail to pour water into the two glasses.

“He told me the Third Class Brake Car at the rear of the train was converted into a barracks of sorts for the train guard and has facilities for weapon and armour maintenance. I explained to him after he told me that, that my plasma rifle has been acting up lately and asked if I could have permission to use the workbench there to fix it and he agreed, so that’s what I’m doing now,” He explained.

“Oh, well I hope you get to the bottom of why your rifle kept going wrong,” I said as I gently gave Xian her glass.

He nodded as he opened the door. “I don’t know how long I’ll be so I’ll see you whenever I get this piece of shit fixed,”

“Fruity!” I hissed. “Mind your language; we have a young filly here,”

He laughed. “C’mon hon, she doesn’t understand a word I say,” He said before he left.

I sighed after he left. It still didn’t make it right, and it was kinda like talking behind somepony’s back. Shaking my head slightly to shake those thoughts, I turned to Xian who was holding her glass in her fore hooves and taking gentle sips. The way she would sip just a tiny amount of the water told me how she must have rationed herself at times when water was low for her. I couldn’t imagine how bad it must have been trying to survive alone out there and being just a kid too.

Hey, Fruity won’t be back for a while and it won’t do us any good being stuck in this cabin the entire trip. Would you like to walk with me?” I asked with a gentle smile and a soft hoof stroke through her mane.

Won’t the other ponies hate us?” She whimpered.

I gave her a confident smile. “No, this isn’t Bonbon Spings nor Hayside, on this train hate towards anypony isn’t tolerated and the Marshall of the train is a good pony, and besides…” I then gave her a serious expression. “…I won’t let anything happen to you, I promise,”

Xian seemed to relax a bit as she gave a weak smile. “Ok, if I’m with you I’ll be ok,”

With a groan of relief from the bench as it didn’t have to hold my weight anymore, I stood up and stretched out my wings. It felt good to stand up again after being laid or sat down for so long. I also made sure that Lucky 13 was in its holster, can’t be too careful after all. Xian held out her half empty glass and I gently took it with my teeth and set it down on the table before walking over to the cabin door to which Xian joined me at after jumping down from the bench.

Are you ready?” I asked while looking down at the young filly that now stood close to my forelegs.

The black striped filly gave a nervous nod. I smiled softly and reached down with my wing to gently reassure her and nudged open the door to the corridor. We turned right and started to head towards the front of the train, passing several over cabin doors before reaching the open gangway passage into the next car. It was a wonder I wasn’t tripping over Xian with how close she was sticking to me and walking between my fore and hind legs on one side.

I could hear conversations from multiple ponies as we passed through the gangway door into the next car which was one of the standard passenger cars, which meant there were no private cabins. It was simply benches with tables in between and it was fairly populated. However, as soon as we entered the train car, the mixed conversations died, it went deadly silent. I felt Xian hug close to my forelegs when everything went quiet. I held my breath as I looked out across the car. Several rough looking ponies were in here, each giving me a distasteful eye but none making a move but eventually, one by one they all turned back to their conversations despite them being a little hushed.

I’m scared,” Xian whimpered as we began to slowly walk down the centre of the car.

Don’t worry; you’re safe with me,”

About half way through the car I began to get that feeling of being watched again. I stopped and looked around, slowly scanning the train car for anything odd, even my reticule appeared, locking onto the heads of each pony as I looked at them but none of them seemed to be looking my way or Xian’s. There were two ponies sat at the rear of the car from where we came in, those two mercenaries covered from head to hoof in military gear. I couldn’t see their faces or eyes but they weren’t looking directly at me, but I got a bad feeling when I looked at them. Shaking my head to rid myself of the bad feeling I urged Xian to keep walking so we could pass on into the next car.

Are you sure we’ll be ok, everypony was looking at us?” Xian whimpered.

Shh, it’ll be ok, this is a whole new world for you, just give it time, oof,” I replied but then grunted as I walked into somepony while having my attention on Xian.

“Eep!” The filly squeaked when I came to a sudden stop and whoever I walked into fell onto their rump.

“Ow, you feel like you are built like this train,” A quiet female but familiar voice said with a groan.

I blinked and looked down to the mare I had put on her ass. “Tulip?” I asked.

“Huh, do I… wait… Crystal?” The small mare went wide eyed as she took in my features. “Um wow, err, you have changed since the last time I saw you,”

“Um, it’s… complicated,” I said while giving my wings a nervous flap. “I’m also not comfortable talking about what happened, a lot happened in the Marejave,” I sighed as I folded my wings.

I was grateful for the distraction of Xian making a nervous squeak which gained our attention.

“Oh, you have a kid too?” Tulip asked with a soft smile directed to Xian.

“Oh, no, she’s an orphan that I rescued,” I replied as I gently stroked her back with a forehoof.

“Oh the poor dear,” Tulip said with sympathy and attempted to approach, but Xian hid behind my forelegs. “Is she ok?”

“Yeah, she’ll be ok, she’s just a little nervous right now after all things considered,” I replied. “How is your daughter?”

Tulip smiled “Oh she’s doing wonderfully, thanks to you. Again I can’t thank you enough for saving her life,”

I gave a warm smile to the small mare. “Don’t mention it; I’m happy she’s doing ok,”

Tulip smiled but then cringed and crossed her hind legs. “Ohhh, I’m sorry, I really need to go, ugh I hate that the toilets are at the ends of these carriages,” She whined.

“Oh, I’m sorry, hehe, don’t let us keep you,” I said with a bashful blush as I stepped back to let the mare get passed so she could get to the toilet door that was just next to us.

“Thank you and maybe we’ll see you later, ohhh, bye,” She whined before rushing into the toilet.

Wh-who was she?” Xian asked after Tulip disappeared.

“Hmm?” I asked as I looked down to the filly and met her wide green eyes. “Oh, she’s the mother of a filly I rescued from a fire,

Wow really?” She chirped with amazement.

I gigged and nodded as I gentled nudged her so we could continue onward.

After our meeting with Tulip the walk through the train became rather bland, especially after leaving that open passenger car because the feeling of being watched never came back until we had to pass through it again on the way back. While we walked, or rather I walked and Xian rode on my back, we passed through the Dining Car, a car that could be consider a bar and several more passenger cars until we were stopped by a pair of guards that stood at the entrance to a closed gangway door. Apparently, access to the forward brake car and baggage car were off limits to passengers, mainly because the brake car was the private quarters for the train drivers and fireponies.

XXXXX

Within the Baggage Car, a charred armoured pony like being lay in the shadows of a stack of crates out of sight of any of the guards or crew that would walk through the car. Sensing an approaching energy signature he lifted his head, his glowing red eyes casting an eerie red glow on the wall, crates and other baggage nearby.

“I-01?” He asked himself as he leaned out from behind a stack of crates to eye the gangway door.

After a little while, the energy signature began to move away. “Sent away by the guards?” He asked himself as he settled back down. “I can also sense Unit 1 and Unit 2 deeper in the train; hmm this has gotten more complicated,”

He continued to lay in his hiding spot, brooding over what he could possibly do while having to stay hidden since he didn’t have a helmet to hide his head and rummaging through the baggage would alert ponies to his presence, let alone the other two Mark 2 units. Movement in the car that wasn’t caused by the gentle rocking of the train pulled him from his thoughts as he narrowed his eyes and peered into the gloom of the dark baggage car. Eventually, a young colt no older than eight or nine stepped out and into the light of a window which surprised the machine.

“Dumb guards, couldn’t catch a Bloatsprite,” He chuckled to himself as he began to look around. “This will be a perfect place to play Hide-n-Seek in,”

“Hide-n-Seek?” The machine asked himself before the kid looked right at him, drawn to the red glow of his eyes.

“Whoa, didn’t know somepony was transporting robots, so cool!” He almost squealed and began to approach the partially hidden robot.

“What are you doing in here?” Nexus asked the kid before he could approach him fully.

The young colt froze with wide eyes. “You can talk?”

“You shouldn’t be in here, you should go back,” He said, stepping forward, revealing his skeletal head and charred combat armour.

“Wow, you look awesome!” The kid squealed in excitement at seeing such an unusual machine.

Nexus tilted his head in confusion, he half expected the kid to be frightened of his skeletal face, not be wowed by it. He didn’t know what to do as he looked down at the kid.

“What sort of robot are you, do you have an owner?” The young colt asked quickly, approaching him with curiosity in his eyes.

“I am a Mark 2 Infiltrator, I… believe I have been disowned,” He replied. “So I guess I am my own owner,”

“Oh wow awesome, a free robot, that’s so cool, um, do you have a name?”

“I… call myself… Nexus,”

“Wow,” He beamed. “I’m Spark Plug,”

“Are you not afraid of me?”

“Should I be, I mean you haven’t tried to hurt me, you haven’t threatened me and you are so freaking awesome and cool, so much better than those walking trashcans called Ponytrons,”

Nexus sat down, not sure what to do from here. So he began to talk with the young colt. Learning that he lived with his mother and two brothers and had an affinity for all things mechanical, especially robotics which explained why he found him so amazing. Eventually, the kid even convinced Nexus to play Hide-n-Seek, first explaining how to play and then the young colt teaching him how the game played and worked. Both were able to find each other very easily. Nexus’s synthetic eyes allowed him to see better in the dark and the young colt could see him from the red glow of his eyes despite how well he hid himself.

It wasn’t until a couple of hours later when the colt realised how long he had been there with the machine and had to leave to prevent his mother from coming to find him.

“Thank you for spending time with me and playing with me, I had fun Nexus,” The colt smiled as he made his way towards the gangway door.

“Glad you had a good time, Spark Plug,” Nexus replied as he watched the young colt lift up a panel in the wall beside the gangway door and slipped out. “Heh, sneaky colt,” It wasn’t until he left that the machine registered a feeling that he realised was loneliness. Making a friend out of the colt had made him feel something good and he wished to feel it again.

XXXXX

During the walk back through the train I kept my wings folded so I wasn’t hiding Xian with them and for a while she was laid down trying to be as small as possible so ponies wouldn’t notice her. For a time, it was me that got their attention for the most part and most ponies didn’t seem to notice the zebra filly on my back and as most tended to mind their own business Xian became braver and eventually sat up. By the time we were heading back to our cabin, she was sat up and actively looking around with curious eyes, finally starting to take in the wonders this train had for a youngster like her.

By the time we made it back to our cabin, it was around lunchtime and a grumble from my back told me somepony was hungry. I was about to suggest we head back to the dining car, but we had just passed it but then I remembered we still had some apples that we picked from Stable 16’s orchard.

How about a nice juicy apple?” I asked as I crouched down so she could get off my back and onto a bench.

Are they nice?

Well, I would say they are, Apples were some of the best food products of pre-war society,” I said with a nostalgic smile as I stood on my hind legs to retrieve my medical box from the overhead.

Once the box was down and set on the table, I popped open the lid and fished out two shiny red apples. Sadly that was all the apples I had in my box. I think Fruity still had a couple floating about somewhere in his magic duster pockets. A good thing about having wings, you could use them as feather dusters. I lifted an apple with a hoof and gently used a wing to give it a feather wipe since it been inside my medical box along with all my other junk before I gave it to the young filly. She held the large red fruit in her forehooves sceptically, eying the unfamiliar fruit with an adorable scrunched up muzzle.

I giggled. I’ve seen this before in little ponies, she wouldn’t eat it until I show her it’s safe. I plopped down, a little too carelessly because the bench gave an almighty protest to my weight but thankfully held, and with an embarrassed blush, took my apple and took a bite out of the fruit. Thankfully, the time it had been in my box hadn’t be long enough to make it go off as it was still crisp and juicy and not to mention delicious. I hummed with delight at the taste and fought hard to keep my self-control. Hey, I hadn’t eaten anything this good since I woke up. Seeing that I was enjoying my apple, Xian took a very small tentative bite out of hers and she froze with eyes the size of saucers and then it happened, she tore through the apple like a filly possessed until nothing but the core was left. I giggled as I partially expected that and it was hilarious and adorable at the same time. With a face soiled with bits of apple, juice and skin, Xian reclined on her bench and sighed happily with her meal.

You must have been hungry,” I giggled as I finished my apple, core and all. I didn’t even realise I’d eaten my core until I noticed Xian’s lying on the table.

The filly gave a sheepish smile and a blush. “It was really tasty,”

I giggled softly while I discarded her core into a waste bin near the door and then sat back down on the bench next to her. “Hmm, ok so since we have time to kill while we wait for Fruity to come back, how would you like to learn Equestrian?” I asked.

Her ears perked up as she looked up at me. “Equestrian, do I really need to learn it?

Well, you don’t have to, but it would certainly be very beneficial to you, plus it’ll be easier on us if we all were able to speak the same language amongst each other,” I explained honestly.

O-ok,”

Don’t worry sweetie, you’ll be glad to have this language,” I said softly while giving her mane a reassuring stroke.

She gave a weak smile while I began to look for something to write with and on. A quick look around the cabin resulted in no recreational supplies at all like a pen or paper leaving me with nothing to start teaching the young filly. However, I did know where I could acquire a notepad and a pen. I just hoped they’d be generous enough to give me some spare ones.

Since I can’t find anything to write on and with, I’m just going to take a quick trot to the Dining Car, will you be ok on your own for a minute or two? I promise I won’t be long.”

The young filly gave a nod and lay down on the bench, getting herself comfortable.

I won’t be long, don’t open the door to anyone unless it’s Fruity ok, I’ll be right back,” I said and left the cabin.

The trip to the Dining Car was pretty much uneventful and despite a couple of the waiters being a little sceptical, probably because I’m a zebra, a waitress gave me a spare notepad and pen. After giving my thanks I began my return trip. I had to pass through a couple of passenger cars to get back to our cabin and the car connecting to the Dining Car was another corridor car and the two mercenaries from earlier were stood talking to each other halfway down the corridor, effectively blocking my path. I could feel my apprehension again as I approached them.

“Hey Razzle, check it out, a Stripe with wings,” One of the completely covered black tailed mercs said in a sort of mocking tone.

The merc referred to as Razzle turned his or her head to look in my direction. My feeling of unease escalated tenfold, something about these two was setting me on edge but I couldn’t understand why.

“You must be really brave or very stupid wandering around unsupervised, there are plenty of unsavoury characters that would like nothing more than to take advantage of a zebra such as yourself,” Razzle said in a clear feminine voice that held a level of power behind her tone, which told me she was the one in charge.

“Heh, yeah, ponies like us…” The other pony’s words were suddenly cut off as Razzle spun around and gave him a swift hard smack to the face.

“Do I have to cable tie your mouth shut you stupid mule?” She hissed threateningly.

“Ow, sorry sis,”

“Um, c-can I get by?” I squeaked.

“Sure, I need to re-educate my brother on when not to speak his mind,” She said as she moved aside enough to let me squeeze passed.

I gave my thanks and quickly squeezed passed, but as I passed them and headed for the gangway door, that sense of being watched came back. I shuddered and quickened my pace and left the car. I didn’t slow down as I went through the other cars and back to our cabin. I couldn’t be happier to back inside our cabin; as soon as I shut the door I slumped to the floor and let out a breath to calm my nerves.

Xian was worried that something was wrong when I came back but I was able to assure her it was nothing. After getting comfortable again on the bench I used the notepad and pen to begin writing out the Equestrian alphabet, one letter per page and tearing it out and then putting it on the table as well as numbers zero to nine. Once I had enough of the letters and numbers I explained to the filly that everything in front of her was the Equestrian alphabet and numbers and that I’d start by teaching her them.

After a few tries I was able to concentrate myself so that I wasn’t automatically slipping into translation mode when looking at Xian. It was bugging me how I was just doing that. I sure hope Paradigm Cybernetics has a manual or something. It was around mid-afternoon when Fruity returned while I was in the middle of teaching Xain. She was learning really quickly on forming how to say the letters. I suppose being exposed to Equestrian speakers for the better part of three years had unintentionally helped her.

“I’m sure that’s not what playing cards are supposed to look like,” Fruity said as he rolled a completely unrecognisable weapon off his back after he closed the door behind him. His weapon even appeared as an “Error, cannot identify!” in my vision.

I smiled and got up from our bench and gave him a hug, unintentionally also wrapping my wings around him too. Jeez these things are huge, they practically drowned him. Fruity returned the hug and then pecked me on the cheek.

“Missed you too,” He said with a soft smile.

I blushed lightly as I folded my wings. “So, err, did you fix your rifle?”

He nodded and then gestured to the new weapon on the opposite bench. I blinked; the weapon on the bench didn’t look like the Q-Modulator apart from the fact it shared the same brownish colour.

“Wait, that’s the Q-Modulator?” I asked in surprised.

“I know, isn’t it just the dog’s bollocks?” He beamed with pride.

Good thing I’ve heard that expression meaning something good before, otherwise it would have confused the heck out of me. I nodded in agreement as I inspected the heavily modified plasma rifle. The weapon’s central chassis, handle grip and ammo cradle looked unchanged, but the rest of the weapon had been modified heavily. The old standard long barrel had been replaced with a three copper pronged barrel that had several cables connecting to each prong. The stock was fuller, longer, and sleeker, like it was designed to absorb recoil and sitting in the middle but on the top of the chassis was a dot reflex sight.

“What have you done to it?” I gaped.

“Well, at first I wasn’t sure what else I could do for this thing after giving it a general once over. I was still getting charging problems even after I did some proper maintenance. Thankfully, a pegasus mare that turned out to be a guard here helped me out,” I felt my hairs on the back of my neck bristle at the mention of another mare helping him. “Apparently, her mother was a dashite too and an ex-Enclave soldier and had taught her a great deal on energy weapons and she was able to tell me that the Q-Modulator’s capacitor was faulty.” Fruity sat on his haunches as he pulled the weapon off the bench and held it in his hooves and showed it off while he talked. “I suppose two hundred years of doing nothing and then being forced into action was too much for the old thing and so with her help we upgraded it to what she called an Overcharged Capacitor, it drastically increases its energy output as well as enables more shots per Mana Cell. However with the increased power, the old standard barrel became obsolete and would break down if I didn’t at least upgrade it. Considering the large amount of ammo I have for this puppy she suggested an Automatic Barrel, it reduces the damage per shot by two thirds but I’d be firing multiple plasma bolts in rapid succession which would make this a deadly weapon to have and to counter the recoil from the automatic fire the original stock was replaced with a Markspony Stock to make aiming and firing the weapon more comfortable. The last thing she suggested and helped me make for this was the reflex sight, at least now I’ll be able to use this weapon more effectively thanks to her,”

I nodded, but inside I was fuming. Another mare had spent time with Fruity, being close to him, talking to him and doing something with him… Wait, oh my gosh I think I’m jealous of somepony I don’t even know.

“Hey, you ok?” He asked as he laid the weapon back on the bench and gently put his forehoof on my shoulder.

“Yeah, I’m ok, nothing to worry about,” I smiled and gave him a nuzzle on the cheek.

“Ok, so, what’s going on?” He asked.

“Oh, just began to teach Xian the Equestrian language,” I replied.

For the rest of the afternoon and the evening we spent the time helping the filly with learning the Equestrian alphabet. By the time we ate dinner and the sun had gone down she had a fair grasp on the letters and numbers. It filled me pride to see how far she came in just a short time.

I put the pieces of paper into the notepad and left it on the table as we finished the lesson for the day. Xian had already passed out on the plush seat cushion of the bench, sleeping soundly. She looked so peaceful, so innocent. I smiled warmly as I gently laid a wing over her as she slept and reclined to get comfortable myself to get ready to sleep.

“Crystal, are you still sure it’s a good idea to bring her with us?” Fruity asked as he watched me drape my wing over the filly.

“Of course. Sure, it’s not going to be like where she has been for the last few years but she won’t be alone, fighting to survive for herself every day and night. She’ll have us to look out for her and to protect her,” I said seriously.

“It’s just that, mainland Equestria is much more dangerous than the western region we have been in. There are more monsters, robots, and ponies that will like to fuck or kill you every chance they get and a filly like her will also be highly desired by slavers,” He reasoned.

I nodded with understanding but…“I promised her I won’t leave her alone, I’m not going to abandon her, and I’ll defend her from anyone who tries to hurt her,”

Fruity smiled. “Since when did you get all maternal?”

“I don’t know, but she deserves our protection and guidance,”

He nodded, “Well, I think we better get some shut eye, not much else we can do unless you want to try and get bladdered?”

“Sleep sounds good,” I agreed.

Physically, I didn’t feel tired mainly because of what I am, but mentally I was exhausted. I don’t think we’ve had a proper night’s sleep since before Stable 16. That was an experience I really want to forget. Repositioning myself so I could lay on my barrel and rest my head on my forelegs, I kept one of my wings draped over Xian and closed my eyes.

“Good night Fruity, see you tomorrow,” I yawned.

“Good night,” Fruity replied as he flopped onto his bench.

I lay there listening to the gentle breathing of the young filly and feeling the gentle rocking of the train before allowing it to lull me to sleep.

XXXXX

As awareness slowly began to return to me after Celestia knew how long, I opened my eyes to find myself in a brightly lit, clean sterile room filled with an assortment of advanced looking equipment. I didn’t know where I was or who I was. My head was swimming, was I in a hospital?

I tried to look around but found that I couldn’t feel my legs or even my body for that matter. Panic began to set in as I tried desperately to move something, anything but I couldn’t feel nothing. After what felt like hours of trying to move something I finally shifted my gaze and what I saw confused me. I expected to see my body, despite not being able to remember how I looked, but instead of fur I saw gleaming metal. From what I could see, my chest and limbs were made of metal but it looked like something was missing from the chest piece as there was a deep circular hole in the middle of the breast plate.

Who am I?
Where is my body?
What is this?
Where am I?
What am I doing here?

Were all questions running through my increasingly panicked and confused mind until there was a dull thud from the end of the room. A door swung open and a beige coloured unicorn with a purple mane done up in a short pony tail and dressed in a M.o.A white lab coat trotted up to the table I happened to be laying on while levitating some sort of device. The mare sat down by the table and set the device down beside my metal leg. From what I could see the device was cylindrical and had a blue ring with copper coils around it at several intervals but in the centre was an indentation meant for something.

“That lying…” The mare grumbled to herself, trailing off as she turned her head to levitate some tools from across the room that were out of my eyesight since I couldn’t turn my head.

She turned back around with a bunch of tools I couldn’t remember the names too. Why can’t I remember anything? The mare looked hurt, upset, like she had just found something out that had shattered something she once thought was good in her life.

“I know you were no volunteer now, that asshole came clean about his project,” She hissed as she brought her tools to the device and began to tweak bits and bobs. “But I can’t back out of this now either, I’m too far into it for myself to not see it through,” She added as she moved the tools to the centre. “At least I can use this lie of a project to do something good. I’ve never done a full body reconstruction before and with this I can help ponies who’ve suffered paralyse from the neck or so down if you’re a success,”

I didn’t know what she was talking about, it was complete gibberish to me, ugh, I couldn’t seem to shift the cobwebs in my head.

“You can’t just barge on through here without an appointment!” Another, much older mare’s voice shouted from somewhere.

Another door off to the left opened and a well-built green earth pony stallion with a short buzz cut black mane walked in. He was quickly followed by a middle aged earth pony mare, whose coat was tan in colour and had a silvery white mane from age.

The older mare panted. “I, I’m sorry Dr Pear, he just wouldn’t take no for an answer,”

The mare who I assumed was Dr Pear fixed the green stallion with a death glare. “It’s ok Miss Scroll, my employer can walk in when he wants it seems… besides, I need to talk to him anyway,”

“Um, ok Doctor, is there anything I can do?”

“Since Colonel Ironside has just shown up, I’m afraid I’m to cancel my three o’clock and my five o’clock appointments for this afternoon, but please be sure to give the families my apologies and that we’ll fit them as soon as possible free of charge,”

The older mare nodded and left, once the door closed the dark green stallion snorted.

“Why do you even have that old nag working here?”

“Ivory Scroll was highly recommended for her administration skills and since I appointed her, we’ve had a twenty five percent increase in efficiency thanks to her organisation and administration skills. You do know she was mayor of a town called Ponyville until she lost her last election, she ran that town longer than any mayor previously,” Dr Pear inform him pointedly.

“I didn’t come here for a lecture,” He groaned. “I came to give you this. It arrived this morning from one of my special sources,” He slipped a forehoof into his Ministry of Awesome jacket pocket and pulled out a diamond shaped gem and hoofed it over to Dr Pear. “This is the regeneration talisman for the Regeneration Regulator,”

“Ok, great…” Dr Pear said with little to no emotion as she took the gem in her magic and began to force the glowing pink stone into the cradle in the middle of the device she had been working on.

“Still sore about the truth?”

She growled. “Of course I am, you killed an innocent mare, and not only that, made me believe we were working on a totally legitimate project that had Princess Luna’s seal of approval. BUT NO, WE FUCKING DON’T. I COULD BE IMPRISONED IF THEY EVER FIND OUT!” She screamed with rage.

She levitated the regulator and pushed it into the hole in the metal breast plate.

“It was the only way we could have gotten this done,” Colonel Ironside said calmly.

“BULL FUCKING SHIT!” The mare screamed as she twisted the device where it then clicked into place, the blue metal ring started to glow slightly and the gem glowed brighter.

“Those eyes are glowing again,”

My panic doubled, what could I do, he noticed me, are they going to kill me, what’s going to happen? I began to panic but found still nothing would respond to me.

“What, again?!” The mare sighed. “I don’t understand why she keeps waking up,” I heard before she disappeared out of sight before there was a spark…

XXXXX

I awoke with a start, bolting up with a strangled gasp from the bizarre dream. I looked around fearfully but as the features of the cabin, my coltfriend and Xian came into focus, I let out a sigh of relief.

“Oh, it was just a dream,” I sighed and slumped back down. “Just a horrible, disturbing dream,”

Looking up from the bench I could see outside the window. The sky was cloudy, I guess we’re under that permanent cloud cover generated by those weather manipulating towers Fruity had told me about during our trip to the New Pegasus. It looked rather dull and bleak out there and since the clouds were a dull grey, it suggested it was early morning. A quick glance at my Pipbuck confirmed my suspicion as the clock on the small foreleg mounted device said it had just gone five in the morning.

It was still early so I tried to sleep for another couple of hours, but the dream was still fresh in my head and I couldn’t shake the horrible feeling it left. So I lay there watching either Fruity or Xian sleeping peacefully while listening to the clickity clack of the train wheels on the track.

Everypony and zebra woke up a couple of hours later and Fruity was quick to notice I was feeling down from my dream. Not wanting to hide it or lie to him, I told him I had a bad dream which it was. He nodded in understanding and told me that the wasteland had its way giving you nightmares. Considering Stable 16, I wouldn’t say he’s wrong since that place was certainly nightmare fuel.

We settled into a routine on the train for the next couple of days of having breakfast, teaching and going over the Equestrian alphabet with Xian, having lunch, then helping her begin forming her words before dinner to which we then relaxed for the rest of the night. We decided to do all this mostly in our cabin as not to upset some of the passengers, also I wanted to avoid those mercenaries as well as that feeling of being watched which seemed to happen every time those mercs were in the same car as me.

I was filling with pride for Xian as after the third afternoon, she had a full grasp on the alphabet and was well on her well to forming words as she was getting used to what sound certain letters made when put together. We had been teaching her things like what double E sounds like or what sound “tion” makes or when some lets are used together like “ea”, or how letters can change the sound of the letter that starts the word like, “See” since the double E gives the S the sound of the letter C. Again, I believe her three years or so exposure to Equestrian speaking ponies has helped her as she was quick to learn some words, words she would have likely heard from Bonbon Springs.

The peaceful journey was interrupted late on the third night when a siren sounded briefly and then Marshal Slate’s voice came through the train’s PA system.

We are initiating Dark Running; all passengers must remain in their cabins for their own safety until further notice. All guards to combat stations immediately!

Thankfully, Xian was fast asleep when this happened, I didn’t want her to get scared over this, and she looked so peaceful curled up into a ball while she slept.

“What’s Dark Running?” Fruity asked as the light crystal in our table lamp dimmed until it went out and the electric light in the ceiling went out too. “The hell?” He said looking up when the light went out.

I slipped off the bench gently as to not disturb Xian and approached the window and looked out into the dark clouded night. “Dark Running was a tactic used on trains to camouflage them from aerial attacks at night. The trains would run with no lights on at all, they even had a canvass to put over the gap between the cab and tender to hide the glow from the firebox,” I explain as I squinted to try and pick out details in the fast moving dark scenery.

“Wait, aerial?” Fruity jittered with a nervous edge and crawled across his bench to lay on his stomach next to me so he could peer out of the window as well. His gaze was fixed onto the clouds above us.

“What do you think it is?” I asked.

Fruity didn’t reply, instead I could feel the bench beside me begin to shudder. When I looked over to him, his gaze was fixed to a certain point on the horizon while he shook with his face showing wide eyed terror. I followed his gaze and after a moment something came into focus sitting just below the clouds and it was huge, seemed to have thunder clouds attached to it, and had a veritable swarm surrounding it and going down to the ground to what looked like an old steel mill.

“F-Fruity, what, what is that?” I gulped in shock at the impossible flying contraption.

“An Enclave Raptor,” He replied, gulping with fear. “But, I’ve never seen them bring one below the clouds before,”

“And that swarm, are they Enclave soldiers?”

“Yeah, a Raptor can carry a good couple of hundred power-armoured pegasi at a time,” Fruity whimpered.

“Why would they need so many down here?” I asked.

“I dunno, the Enclave had never shown any interest in helping or even bothering to reclaim the surface…” He then wore a look of deep thought. “Maybe, it’s a long shot, but maybe the rumours about the Enclave being low on resources are true…”

“Low on resources?”

“For two hundred years the Grand Pegasus Enclave has relied on the resources it had stockpiled since the war as well as mining the mountain tops that poked above the clouds. We’ve even butchered a Stable that was meant for us Pegasi that was built into a mountain summit,” He leaned close to the window, watching the swarm of pegasi flitting around the large hovering aircraft. “They always said stocks were good despite the cuts that were being made; I guess if they are coming down for resource gathering the Enclave isn’t as strong as we all thought,”

I opened my mouth to say something but a shift in the train stopped me. “Do you feel that?” I asked in concern.

“We’re speeding up,” He confirmed as he nodded. “Running in the dark won’t help us, they’d see us if they were interested,”

I gulped. “Well let’s hope this old train still has the speed it was known for,”

I don’t think either of us got any sleep that night. We were both glued to the window watching the Enclave until the train had moved far enough away that it became impossible to see them and once we couldn’t see them we finally relaxed. However, our night had gone as the sky was lightening from the approaching dawn.

Thank you for co-operation, the danger has passed and you all may now walk freely around the train once more, sorry for any inconvenience and we hope you have a wonderful start to your day,” Slate’s voice came through the PA again, letting us know it was safe.

“Well,” Fruity sighed with relief now that the Enclave danger had passed. “No rest for the wicked,”

I sat on my haunches and reached up with my forelegs and pulled him into a hug. He looked surprised at first from the sudden hug, but he smiled as he wrapped his forelegs around me and rested his head on my shoulder.

“Thank you,” He cooed.

I pulled back so I could look at him directly and smiled. “You were brave during the night,” I praised and leaned in and kissed him softly on the lips.


“I had you with me,” He replied as he lovingly rubbed his nose against mine.

I blushed heavily as I returned the gestured before we fell into another passionate kiss. We would have probably moved to tongue wrestling if it wasn’t for a yawn which signalled Xian had woken up. We broke our kiss and fought to rid ourselves of our blushes, me more than him since his purple coat hit his well and greeted the young filly to resume the routine.

XXXXX

The disguised robots, Units 1 and 2 stood together in the Bar Car in a corner quietly conversing with each other and generally making the other ponies in the car trying to have a good and relaxing time nervous. Occasionally, one of them would look up as if checking something before turning back to their peer and continued their conversation.

“It’s been nearly a week; do you think HQ is getting worried?”

“Buckshot, put whatever sorry excuse you have left for a brain back into your head and think for a moment would you,” Corporal Razzle sighed. “We are outside of the facility’s transmission range, they would have tracked us until we fell off the radar and we did report that we had located the Mark 1 and that it was about to board this train. The Colonel and Mistress are fully awa…. Did I just call Unit 1000, Mistress?” She trailed off midsentence.

Buckshot nodded.

“Damn this mare’s memories of a stronger female lover…” She growled before immediately fixing her gaze on her brother. “And you shut your mouth, I don’t want to hear single snarky word,” She threatened.

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Buckshot said with obvious sarcasm.

“Right…” Razzle shook her head to get herself back on track. “Ahem, they know where we are and where we are going and since we are on a train surrounded by pedestrians, we would make a scene and be too much at risk of being discovered. We have to operate quietly, hang back and observe until we can acquire the hybrid unit until we can capture it safely, understand?”

Buckshot nodded before turning his gaze off to the front of the train to where the locomotive was steaming away. “And what about the stowaway?”

“Unit 1002 hasn’t moved from its position since it came aboard, it’s surprising,”

“Unit 1002?”

Unit 1, aka Corporal Razzle, stared at her brother. “You know as much as I do on our race of machines, how do you not remember that?” She asked, shocked at his lack of memory.

“Oh I remember, just can’t be assed pulling up the file,” He replied with a shrug.

“Ugh, I’m paired with a moron,”

“Yeah I love you too sis,”

“Whatever. Unit 1002 is the unit number of the Mark 2 that was mean for the Colonel, its why he calls it I-02 IS, the IS stands for Ironside,”

“Absolutely correct,” Unit 2, aka Buckshot, replied. If he had lips he’d be grinning like an idiot.

“You actually knew didn’t you, you just said that to make me explain it didn’t you?”

“Eeyup,” Buckshot said smugly which made his sister groan.

“So help me I’ll be down one brother if you keep that up,”

“Heh, good luck, there are nine hundred ninety seven more I can inhabit and annoy you all over again,” He gloated.

Everyone in the train car cringed at the loud groan that came from Razzle following that comment.

XXXXX

The journey had been long and kinda boring apart from our Equestrian lessons with Xian. However, we did get some excitement from the Raptor sighting and when we had to pass through the same Raider town like last time which lead to the previous locomotive developing its fault and again we sped up but the Marshal reassured us that they didn’t push the locomotive’s safety limits. Xian was very frightened when we were passing through the town, there was an awful lot of gunfire going off and the sounds of metal impacting metal as bullets struck the shell plating of the train cars was quite unsettling.

Xian could now speak a few words of Equestrian, even a short sentence if given enough time. I was very proud of her for making such fast progress and as a bonus she could understand spoken Equestrian ok if we didn’t speak too fast. She would learn as we go from here.

Sleeping hadn’t been that great since my dream. I’d been scared of going to sleep in case I had that disturbing dream or nightmare again but thankfully the times I have slept, despite only sleeping a few hours at a time, my dreams were peaceful or none existent. Despite the dream happening several days ago now, it was still clear in my head, not like a normal dream. Normally, you tend to forget a dream’s details fairly quickly, but this one, it was stuck and I couldn’t shake it. Especially the fact that I dreamt that that Ironside pony was in it and that I even had a clear idea of his appearance.

The train hit a long bend and the dark monoliths of the destroyed city of Manehattan came into view in the distance on the far horizon. From this far out I got to see just how big the city truly was, it was almost twice as big as Las Pegasus was before the war ravaged it. In the gloom of the ever present cloud cover I could see the green balefire glow from the missile impact. So much of the city was nothing but ruin, collapsed and deteriorating shells of buildings while the streets were filled with the remains of carriages, carts, buses and rubble from the event that brought about the end. Remembering my first day in the city, I was reminded of how bad this city was compared to my home, not to mention I had a building nearly drop on me.

I shifted my gaze down to my lap where Xian was peacefully sleeping, making little squeaks as she snored quietly. I frowned as Fruity’s words replayed in my mind about bringing her along. Manehattan’s environment will scare her beyond anything she was used to back in the Marejave around Bonbon Springs, hell not even I know what lurks in that city now. This place was going to be as alien to me as it will be to her and we have to search the city for a specific building. But she had no better place to be than with somepony who’ll look out for her and care for her. After everything we’ve done on this train, teaching her Equestrian and bonding with her so she can trust us, trust me. I hope I can be there for her when she needs me. The fact she hadn’t rejected me after I revealed myself to her must have meant something for us.

There was a sudden and violent shudder from the train as it ran over a set of points and Xian lifted her head tiredly. She snuggled against me for a moment before rubbing her eyes with his small forehooves and letting out an adorable little yawn. I smiled softly as I gently stroked her mane.

“Are you ready to start a whole new adventure?” I asked in Equestrian.

“I am… ready,” She said slowly, making sure she pronounced her words correctly.

“You’ll be speaking like the rest of us in no time squirt,” Fruity said with a smile as he sat up and stretched out his wings and back after waking up himself.

She smiled softly at his words and looked at him gratefully.

“We’ll be in the city in the next couple of hours, so, what’s the plan Crystal?” Fruity asked with a yawn.

I opened my mouth to answer when the train shuddered violently again. This was more violent than before and a quick glance out the window told me why as we were passing over a section of track where many lanes crossed and intertwined. I had to grip my seat to stay on the bench but Fruity wasn’t as lucky as he was shaken off his seat and fell on the floor, landing square on his rump.

“Faust tonight!” Fruity groaned as he sat on the floor rubbing at his sore rump with a forehoof.

“Are you ok?”

Fruity nodded as he climbed back up onto his seat and sat down and gestured for me to continue.

“Well, the plan as of yet is to go to Tenpony Tower first, somepony there ought to know where Paradigm Cybernetics is. Once we know where it is we can better plan on how to get there in the shelter and safety of the tower,”

Fruity nodded. “Sounds good enough, hmm, the best pony to ask to find a place like that in that city would be the assistant to famous DJ-PON3, he kinda knows everything.”

“Good idea, I just hope those ponies won’t be as stuck up as they were last time,” I sighed, remembering the bad way they had looked at and treated me. Well, most of them.

“The fact you’ve spontaneously grown a pair of wings will make them even more unbearable, ugh, just letting them have digs at you for being a hybrid will be better than if they find out what you really are,” Fruity cringed. “I dread to think of what they might do if they find out you’re a robot in zebra skin, they are paranoid enough as it is,”

Wow yeah, a robot that can be hidden in pony flesh. If ponies knew that it would make them super paranoid and incredibly suspicious of new ponies. The doctor that helped me on my first day as a Wastelander was right; it would be in my best interest not to tell anypony. I suppose I could only tell those I knew I can truly trust which as of now is only Fruity and little Xian here. This may be a fun experience to have… totally not sarcasm… Ok it was sarcasm.

There was a flash of light followed by a loud booming grumbling before the window started to get pelted by fat drops of water. We turned our attention to the window to see that the sky had darkened considerably and was now raining quite heavily. While we stared out the window, we witnessed another flash of light, seeing a flash of lightning ark down from the clouds and strike the top of Knight Tower, the iconic tower with the horse head roof, on one of it ears. I was surprised the tower was still standing and that the lightning rods were still working.

Xian whimpered and held onto me with each rumble of thunder and flash of lightning, clearly scared by the new type of weather. It took me a minute to reassure her that it was ok and that it wasn’t going to harm her, if anything she would get a little wet because of the rain. The poor filly would get used to the weather eventually; I just hope I’m not overwhelming her with everything she was going to be experiencing once we leave the train.

Mares and Gentlecolts, we will be arriving in Manehattan in the next hour, please gather your things and prepare for arrival,” Marshal Slate’s voice said over the PA System.

“Well, time to get ready,” I said as I stood up from my bench and reached under the seat to retrieve my armour pieces and began to slip them on while Fruity got dressed in his duster. Xian crawled into a corner on the far side of the bench near me and just watched us while we got ready. Getting my medical box to sit between my wings on my back was a little struggle, but with Fruity’s help we got it on and my griffon shotgun strapped down on top of it. Fruity made sure his modified Q-Modulator was charged before he slung it over onto his back and to complete both our outfits we dawned our stetsons, my black one looking a little beat up and worse for wear while Fruity’s looked ok, just a little dirty.

“Alright, shall we go to the bar for one last drink before we leave?” Fruity asked.

“Sure, at least we might avoid the large crowd when the train pulls into the station,” I nodded.

The trip to the bar car was a little hectic as several of the passengers seemed to have the same kind of idea as us since several groups were making their way through the other cars to the ones with the most open spaces such as the Dining Car and the Bar. Getting through the corridor cars became a little tricky when there were ponies wanting to go the other way too, so it became a tight squeeze and a little awkward.

Once we got into the Bar train car, we found a seat close to side door before ordering a round of drinks. Fruity and I had a simple beer while I ordered a Sparkle Cola Cherry for Xian. After forking over nearly fifty caps, we took our drinks back to the table we claimed.

“I didn’t think this train was so popular,” Fruity commented as we observed the many ponies milling about in an assortment of outfits.

“You should have seen it back in pre-war times, sometimes trains like this were jam packed,”

“No wonder the Equestrian Railway teamed up with the Braytish engineers and bought some of their engines,”

I nodded as I took a swig of my drink.

We sat and drank our drinks for at least half an hour before the two Gunner mercenaries entered the car and made their way into the back corner. One of them, the one with the lighter coloured armour pieces was stood in such a way that she could see the whole train car from the where she stood and I swear I could feel her gaze on me.

I leaned over to Fruity just as he finished his drink. “I think we should move to the front of the train,” I whispered.

He licked his lips. “Why?”

“Those mercenaries over there, I feel uncomfortable every time they are around, I think it’s them that give me that being watched feeling,” I whispered a little more harshly. Xian sat looking confused while holding her glass bottle in her forehooves while I conversed with Fruity quietly.

Fruity discreetly flicked his eyes in their direction without turning his head and then narrowed his eyes. “Alright, we better move casually until we are out the door and out of sight before we try to move any faster,” He whispered back.

I nodded and got up from my seat like nothing was wrong and gently picked up Xian and put her onto my back. The sudden motion of being picked up made her squeak, but she settled onto my shoulders and hugged my neck as we began to walk to the far gangway door that’ll lead to rest of the train going towards the engine.

I could still feel the gaze of somepony on me as we passed through the door, but as soon as we turned the corner to head up the corridor passenger car we bolted, running as fast as we could while squeezing passed anypony that go in our way.

“Those guys seem to always appear when we were out of our cabin, I’m sure it is them that are watching us,” I accused as we pushed passed a group of passengers waiting at a side door.

“Mercenaries are a pain to deal with in the wastes,” Fruity sighed.

“If they are after us, why?”

“Who knows, maybe somepony doesn’t like pegasi, maybe somepony doesn’t like zebras, hell, ponies contract mercs for stupid reasons sometimes,” Fruity groaned as we entered the last passenger car before the baggage car.

“I guess we’re as far as we can get, that’s the door to the baggage car and the guards are still there,” I sighed and stood next to the door that would lead out of the train when it stopped.

As we waited, we expected the two mercs to make their way into the car at any time, but thankfully they didn’t but our attention was soon grabbed by the passing scenery. The train had entered the city limits as we were speeding over a bridge into the city. We were all glued to the window as the rusted pillars of the steel bridge gave way to crumbling monoliths of concrete, glass and steel as the train thundered across the overhead railway.

“Incredible,” I breathed. I also didn’t mean it in a good way, everything was destroyed and decaying.

I suddenly felt my stomach drop as the train began a quick descent down to ground level. Even with a synthetic stomach, a sudden drop while moving unexpectedly made me feel sick still.

We are approaching Mane Street, Grand Central Station, thank you all for traveling with Trans Equestrian Railway,” Marshal Slate’s voice pinged from the PA as the locomotive began to slow the train down.

The next couple of minutes we had to wait for the train to slow down as it entered the station and then stop felt agonizingly slow. We wanted to get off as soon as possible to get away from the mercenaries. As soon as we heard the door lock release, we threw the door open and practically ran out onto the rubble strewn station platform and into the pouring.

“We need to get out of here fast.” I said before a veritable sea of ponies began to spill out of the train coupled with the small mass of ponies waiting to board. This large number of ponies meant we couldn’t run.

“The skylight,” Fruity said pointing up to the glassless cover that used to contain large glass sheets that covered the platforms which was now letting the rain pour down upon us unhindered. The steel frames were now mostly empty giving plenty of space for a pegasus to fly up and through. I nodded in silent agreement.

“Xian honey, we are gonna go flying now so hold onto me tightly ok,” I said softly. The little filly let out a nervous whimper as she tightly gripped my throat.

“We’re gonna have to fly low and fast, just follow my lead and you should be fine ok,” Fruity said in a very serious tone.

We spread our wings ready to fly when I felt the feeling of eyes on the back of my head again. Fruity kicked off the ground and shot up into the air and with a powerful flap of my wings and a kick off with my hind legs I too shot up after him, aiming for one of the large empty window frames in the skylight.

XXXXX

Units 1 and 2 pushed their way out of the train just in time to see their target take off and fly up into the air and out of the train station’s skylight.

“Damn it, the hybrid escaped, fucking ponies slowed us down,” Unit 2 complained.

“Indeed, more ponies on that train than anticipated. Made getting closer to the Mark 1 impossible when trying to squeeze through those narrow corridor cars,” Unit 1 agreed.

“Where are they going now?”

Unit 1 raised her head to follow them but then stopped. She stayed that way for a good minute before looking back down at her brother. “I don’t know… this city is full of mana-cores, it’s difficult to pinpoint which one is the Mark 1,”

“Great, well, looks like we’ll have to do it the old fashioned way,” He groaned before a quick moving dark shape from the front of the train caught his attention. “The rogue unit has just left the train and has slipped out into the city, should we pursue?”

“Negative, our priority is the Mark 1, let the wasteland have him,”

XXXXX


“We’re gonna head straight to Tenpony Tower, I hope Slick missed me,” Fruity laughed as he arched over the stone building of the station to fly low in the street, low enough that he was under the streetlamps and mere inches from the wrecks of carts and what not littering the floor.

“Why are we flying so dangerously low?” I screamed over the sound of the wind blowing past my ears.

“To avoid being seen by any unsavoury characters or owt like that, flying high in a city like this is like going skeet shooting,”

I guess I couldn’t argue with that, there are plenty of places somepony could shoot at use from if we got high enough. I breathed hard, feeling the rush of adrenaline, oddly enough or it could be simulated, as I pumped my wings to keep up with Fruity as he flew so tightly through the street. My gaze narrowed as the street and everything around me seemed to disappear and all I could see was Fruity, the pony ahead of me. I began to feel like I wanted to race him, wanted to beat him to Tenpony. I bit my lower lip the more I focused on him, wanted to outdo him with my superior flying skills. Wait… this isn’t me, I’m not that competitive and I certainly don’t want to prove I’m the better flyer. What’s gotten into me? Ohhh I sure hope Paradigm Cybernetics has some answers for me. I could really do with something to ease my mind and to tell me just what the hay is going on.

“Alright, time to climb high and fast,” Fruity said and we began a steep incline as we came up to Tenpony Tower, the only building that seemed to still have working lights. Fruity cleared the surrounding buildings and flew up higher so he could arch over the high rise that connected to the tower. The station for that high rise was our landing zone. Just as I cleared the buildings and was about to clear the level of the high rise a resounding bang echoed through the city which was then followed by an explosion of pain in my side. I didn’t even have time to react to my threat warning that flashed as soon as the sound echoed before I was hit. My left wing immediately seized up as whatever hit me had hit me right on the shoulder joint and I began to tumble down.

“CRYSTAL!” Fruity screamed.

Thinking quickly I grabbed Xian with my nano-fibre tail and launched her as hard as I could into the air.

“Catch her!” I screamed up to him. Fruity had dove back over the edge of the high rise after me but after seeing my fling the poor screaming in fear filly up to him he caught the now squealing and crying filly as I fell. Oh hell…

The ground was rapidly closing in on me and I couldn’t move my left wing at all.

Pff, I could pull myself out this dive in my sleep,” I heard echo in my head. Oh great, now I’m hearing voices, yea, I’m going crazy. “Stop helplessly flapping like an idiot and open your right wing to pull yourself out of the dive,” The voice said.

I fearfully glanced at my left wing, it was stuck open and with me pumping my right wing in a panic I wasn’t getting any lift at all. The voice was right, to stop free falling I would need to open my right wing to stop the fall and pull myself into a glide.

I opened my right wing and caught the air, my fall slowed and I began to move forward again now that I wasn’t in an uncontrolled descent. I screamed as I was heading right for the tower’s wall and in a panic put myself into a hard bank left, turning myself a hundred and eighty degrees but unfortunately I also put myself back into a slight dive. Picking up speed I banked again to avoid another building but now I was so low I was in the street. My eyes widened when I saw a lamp post in my way, panicking, I banked to avoid it but being this low the banking sent my straight down. I threw up my forehooves over my face and braced myself before I kissed the concrete in a heavy crash.



Influx Crew by Vector Brony

Chapter 12: It's Where?

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Fallout Equestria: Influx

Chapter 12: It’s Where?!

Hours before I-01 left the Marejave.

“Ok Lilly, everything checks out,” Dr Pear said with a relieved smile as she levitated her eye examiner back down to the nearby table and put it back in a rack with the rest of her equipment and tools. “I think it’s safe for you now that we reduce your visits to twice weekly. You have shown much improvement since you arrived,”

The blue alicorn with the silvery blue mane and tail let out a relieved sigh and smiled at the shorter unicorn mare. “Thank you doctor, you and the others here have been such a big help to me since I got here, I… I was so lost and my mind was in tatters. I must have been such a burden,”

Dr Pear smiled as she placed a forehoof on the larger mare’s foreleg. “It was no trouble Lilly, alicorns like you all suffer the same mental struggle when you lose your connection to this, um, Goddess, that your minds have to reconfigure and rebuild themselves,” She sighed as she looked down as some unsavoury memories surfaced. “Unfortunately, whatever this Goddess did to you and the others doesn’t always allow you to regain yourself, as you know there are a couple of patients here that are still two minds about everything, unable to decide if they one pony or the other or a mix of both. The constant splitting and jumble of personalities makes them mentally unstable. It is, however, good that most of you have recovered but we shall continue to have our meetings to ensure there are not relapses,”

Lilly nodded in thanks. “Yes of course, thank you doctor, I’ll see you in the next few days then,”

Dr Pear smiled and nodded. She watched as the blue alicorn turned and left the small lab she established in the lodge that sat on the mountain west of New Pegasus. “She must have not been in this Unity for long; she recovered her mentality faster than most of the other alicorns here. I hope I haven’t jumped the gun in reducing her meetings with me though,”

The beige coated and purple maned unicorn turned and approached her desk and quickly typed up her meeting on her terminal. While she was working, her horn glowed faintly and she sighed.

“Peach Bottom, how many times do I have to tell you to not sneak into my lab, its naughty,” Dr Pear sighed as she turned around to look at an empty space just behind her. As she stared a small pony shape shimmered before it and began to glow with purple light. When the light faded, a sheepish looking unicorn filly sharing similar colours to her sat staring up at her.

“Hehe, you caught me again great grandma, you’re good,” The young filly said with a blush of embarrassment at being caught.

“Ugh, those blue alicorns are a bad influence on you Peach,” Dr Pear said with a small smile as she gently hugged her great great granddaughter. “Why did you sneak in here this time?”

“Um, I was hoping to see your robot leg,” She squeaked.

The mare’s eyes widened but she then gave a fake chuckle as if what she heard was something funny. “Oh Peach, what a wild imagination you have,” She chuckled dryly.

Peach opened her mouth to protest but was cut off as another mare, in appearance looked a few years older than Dr Pear, walked into the lab. “There you are madam, I’ve been looking for you all over,” She sieved with slight anger.

Peach wilted under the mare’s gaze. “S-sorry mummy,”

The mare sighed. “I’m sorry grandmother; I hope she didn’t cause any trouble for you,”

Dr Pear smiled weakly; her heart ached as she was called grandmother by this mare. “Not at all, she’s getting very good at her magic these days Chestnut honey,”

Chestnut nodded before looking down at her daughter. “Go on Peach, back to our dorm, your father is waiting for you, hop to it,” She commanded with a stomp of her hoof to let her daughter know she wasn’t in any mood for games. Peach quickly scampered off after a quick good bye to her great great grandmother.

“I don’t know what I’m gonna do with her,” Chestnut sighed.

“Oh don’t be too hard on yourself dear, you’ve done a wonderful job so far and don’t be scared of asking for help. You’re surrounded by friends here who’d be willing to help you, including me,”

“Thank you grandma,” She smiled warmly before she tilted her head in curiosity. “What did she want this time by the way?”

Dr Pear looked around while at the same time igniting her horn, scanning the room just in case her great grandchild had snuck back in under the guise of her invisibility spell again. Once satisfied they were alone, she used her magic to shut the door. “She wanted to see this,” She said as she pulled up the sleeve of her labcoat on her left foreleg, exposing a large bite where a large chunk of flesh had been ripped away. The flesh surrounding the bite was all healed, but what lay exposed inside the bite should have been bone but instead was gleaming metal. What was supposed to be a knee joint and bones of her upper and lower leg were instead robotic.

“I fear she saw my exposed endoskeleton at some point in the past,” Dr Pear sighed sadly.

“She will understand when she’s old enough, we all did,” Chestnut smiled as she patted her great grandmother’s shoulder supportingly. “You did what you had to do to save yourself and my ancestor,”

“And cursed myself at the same time,” Dr Pear added quietly but grimly. Chestnut’s ears folded back as she frowned and looked down. “I’m over two hundred years old and I look just a few years younger than you… If only I had access to Mark 1 materials…” She shook her head to stop her mind from getting off course and going down a dark path. “However, I think my past is going to bite me in the flank now though Chestnut,”

“How do you mean?”

“When I was down in New Pegasus checking on Duchess, I sensed a power signature of a Mark 2 stroke B Mana-Core and when I turned to see what it was I saw something I didn’t expect to see. I don’t know for sure, but I highly believe that what I saw was my first Infiltration unit, I-01 or Crystal Éclair as I came to know her as during her development. If who I saw is indeed her, then Ironside will have detected her as well,”

The mare nodded with understanding. “But you disabled him though didn’t you, he shouldn’t be able to do anything, right?”

“Yes, but I have a feeling I missed something, I was rushing against a time limit at the time,” Dr Pear sighed as she turned to the dirty window overlooking the snowy scenery outside. “If it was Crystal out there, then he would have likely detected her,”

“Why is she so important?”

“I refused to give him what he wanted, without me, he would have to get what he needs from something else and that would now have to be her. She has a spell I developed woven into her flesh to keep it bound to her endoskeleton, it’s the last piece he needs for his Mark 2 Infiltrators,”

“Let’s hope he’s still helpless then,” Chestnut said as she turned and left the lab.

Dr Pear continued to stare out into the distance, her gaze towards the south east in the general direction of the Production Facility. Her mind was replaying everything she remembered from her time being held captive and what she did before and during her escape, hoping beyond hope she did leave him incapable of doing anything to pursue Crystal if he detected her.

Suddenly, her horn sparked and her eyes widen as she felt a faint energy spike in the direction she was looking.

“T-that was a Mark 7 stroke C Mana-Core, only… only one thing I know of was given one of those,” She gasped in fearful shock. With fearful wide eyes, she quickly bolted from her lab and ran to the lodge’s radio room and quickly seized a wire with a spike like plug on the end with a hoof. She sat down by a desk in the radio room and reached up with her free hoof and grasped her horn. She grit her teeth and held her non-existent breath as she twisted her horn until there was a metallic click and while gritting her teeth she pulled her horn off her forehead. She let out the breath she had been holding, gasping like she had been punched in the stomach from the simulated pain the removal of her horn simulated and quickly she pushed the plug into her forehead port to give herself access to the radio tower’s sensor array.

“Yes, I can clearly feel it, that is a definitely a Mark 7 stroke C, and it is coming from the Production Facility, he… he…” She trailed off as the full weight of what this meant crashed upon her. “Oh Celestia have mercy, he has access to the Vault, I, I was sure I disabled all access links for him, how, how could he have gotten access? How could he…” The answer came to her as she remembered what the 7 stroke C Mana-Core belonged to. “How could I have forgotten? Unit 1000 had its own capsule that needed a separate wiring loom. He must have found a way to gain access to it…” She began to shake as she began to panic since she knew that Ironside could unleash a horde of robots if he so wanted. Her eyes widened as she suddenly felt more energy signatures. “Oh no, two Mark 5 stroke E Mana-Core signatures, he’s, he’s activating more, oh no, oh no, oh no this is bad,” She whimpered fearfully.

Dr Pear stayed hooked up to the radio tower for another hour to see if any more would be activated, but to her surprise only the three she felt were activated but she did feel that the ones with the 5 stroke E Mana-Cores which she knew to be standard Mark 2 units had left the facility and were heading for Crystal while another was in pursuit, which she realised had been active for several weeks prior. The one she knew to be Unit 1000 was staying at the facility, she deduced that it was likely acting as a relay for long range transmissions between the other units.

“I must help her,” Dr Pear said, feeling responsible for the Mark 1.

She didn’t waste much time racing back down to Hayside to begin her search. Unfortunately, by the time she made it back to New Pegasus and Hayside, Crystal and two disguised Mark 2 units had left on a train to Manehattan. However, from asking the right ponies Dr Pear was able to find out what Crystal was doing and if she was indeed trying to get answers then she’ll be ready to offer her help.

XXXXX

I don’t know how much time had passed while I was unconscious but I couldn’t have been out for long because as feeling began to return to me, I found that I was still lying on the tarmac where I crashed. This also, thankfully, meant that my SDP didn’t engage. Xian was quick to come to the forefront of my waking mind as I feared for her safety but I quickly then remembered I tossed her to Fruity to keep safe when I began to go down.

The first thing I became aware of was that, yes, I was still on the floor and that it was still raining as I was soaked through, but as my mind slowly began to wake up, more feeling began to reach me and I let out a whimper as the most prominent feeling was pain. Pain began to flood my senses from my entire body, but mainly a great amount of hurt was coming from my head, neck, left wing and lower right foreleg. I soon realised I was lying on my right side and on my right wing but as I could feel it under me but I couldn’t feel the wing itself. A pang of panic rushed through me when I realised I couldn’t feel my wing when I shifted slightly in an attempt to stand, but felt the ball joint of my wing grind against my shoulder while also pulling on my flesh as I shifted. It seemed I have dislocated the wing but since it was mechanical and now unpowered due to being disconnected I must have lost feeling to it which explains why I couldn’t feel it when I woke up.

“Thank Celestia she’s alive, don’t move, that cunt is still out there!” I heard Fruity yell from somewhere above me before I heard a hard smack against concrete. “Shit that was close!”

I could only assume he meant the sniper that shot me down. I whimpered in pain and slight panic as I felt helpless. I heeded my coltfriend’s words and stayed still, even keeping my eyes closed in case the sniper looked over to me. Now fully awake and aware again, I was able to take note of my HUD still visible despite my eyes being closed. A damage report was being displayed and it showed like I suspected, a disconnected wing, a jammed left wing joint since it’s where I got shot, and a fractured right fetlock. I was surprised I didn’t show any damage to my upper foreleg, shoulder or chest since I smashed into the road there but I suppose the combat armour I’m wearing cushioned the blow.

“Hang on Crystal, we’re coming,”

“Where is he?” I heard a female voice I didn’t recognise shout.

“Tenth story, end window to the left,” Another unrecognisable male voice shouted in reply.

“Got him,” The female confirmed before there was a soft fomph.

“Missed, he moved,”

“Shit, now where is he?”

“GET DOWN!” There was a shout from a pony I did recognise as Slick, the guard we met on our first trip here and his shout was quickly followed by an impact into concrete.

“That fucking prick!” The female growled. “Where is he, I’m gonna fuck him up!”

“He’s moved to the floor above, middle,”

“I see him,”

“DOWN!” Slick shouted again and his warning was met by another impact to whatever cover they were using up there.

“Son of a bitch, he’s a fast little bugger,”

“He’s still there Slugger,”

“Right, he’s gonna eat a bullet,” The mare, Slugger, growled in annoyance before there was another fomph as she fired her weapon.

“Missed, your bullet impacted the windowsill,”

“FACK!” She growled. “Damn rain,”

“He’s moving again,”

“Fuck this shit, I’m getting ‘Mr Fuck You’” The mare growled angrily.

“C’mon Slug, the city doesn’t need any more demolishing, it’s already fucked up as it is,”

“I don’t give a fuck, that prick is gonna eat a shell even if I have to blow out of the top floor of that damn building,”

“What’s ‘Mr Fuck You’?” I heard Fruity ask.

“It is a zebra made Anti-Power Armour Rifle armed with 14mm armour piercing and explosive rounds,” Slick deadpanned.

“That sounds more like a bloody cannon rather than a rifle,”

“No kidding,”

“Alright you Raider twat, I got something just for you,” Slugger grunted while sounding slightly out of breath.

“Faust tonight that thing is huge,” Fruity gaped in amazement.

“You might want to cover your ears,”

“Top Floor, window under roof access,”

“Got him!” Slugger replied before there was an almighty bang from above. Even I was amazed by the sheer power behind the weapon as I felt the vibrations from the shot all the way down here through the tarmac.

“HOLY FUCK!”

The bang from the rifle was swiftly followed by an explosion somewhere in the distance which was accompanied by raining glass and masonry.

“Hehe yea, eat that you bastard,” Slugger cheered with glee.

“You missed,”

“Oh for fuck sake,” Slugger groaned.

“In the corridor, he’s moving; I can see him now that you’ve blown a hole in the wall, aim ten windows to the right,”

I could hear grunting and something shifting above me.

“Fire…………NOW!”

Another massive boom rung out, I’m sure I also heard a window or two shatter nearby, and then another explosion occurred in the distance followed by raining debris.

“You got him,” I could practically hear the cringe in the stallion’s voice. “And you redecorated the hotel’s corridor with him,”

“Haha yea, fuck you Raider,” Slugger cheered happily before grunting in pain.

“Ugh, you are going to run out 14mm rounds at this rate,” Slick sighed. “Not to mention break your shoulder again,”

A set of hooves clopped against the pavement next to me before I felt a muzzle gently nuzzle my cheek.

“Hey, it’s safe now,” Fruity gently whispered.

I groaned and opened my eyes. His duster covered forelegs came into view first before the rest of the Manehattan street and at the end of the ruined strewn street I saw the hotel building to which the Raider must have been hold up in as there were two gaping holes in the top floor that were aflame and spewing out smoke.

“Ugh, hi,” I greeted weakly as I tilted my head to look up at him.

He smiled and leaned down. His lips met mine, despite the rain and where we were I couldn’t help but kiss him back. “Hmmm, I was so worried about you,” He said when we broke the kiss.

It warmed my heart to know he cared so much but I still had a worry that needed to be put to rest. “Where’s Xian, is she safe?”

Fruity nodded as his gestured to the overhead rail line leading to Tenpony Station. “She’s safe in the tower, Slick and his crew was out on guard duty and saw to getting her safe before coming to help you,”

I sighed with relief to know the young filly was safe but still, she must be terrified. With a grunt of pain and effort I rolled onto my belly and began to push myself up. A warning flashed across my vision that my fractured fetlock wouldn’t be able to take my weight properly. I let out a painful cry as I quickly picked my damaged hoof off the floor to keep the weight off it.

“Are you ok?” Fruity asked in concern.

“I have a fractured fetlock and…,” I looked to my right side to see my wing limply hanging against my side. “My right wing has been dislocated, um, could you please reconnect it,” I asked when I stood on three legs.

“Sure, but if this is anything like a normal dislocation, it’s gonna hurt like buggery,” He warned.

I nodded; thankfully I wasn’t a stranger to a dislocation as with how fragile my body was before all this. If I didn’t break or fracture a bone, I usually dislocated it.

He moved to my right side and used his wings to grasp my limp out stretched wing by the tip and near the joint. He delicately moved his wings so he could lift and position my wing so the pins of the ball joint ground against my side until they slotted into the shoulder port from which they belonged.

“Well that wasn’t so bad,” I said as I began to regain some feeling in the wing.

“It’s still loose Crys, I guess it needs locking,” He gave an experimental twist and I cringed. “Ok, I’m gonna twist it nice and hard ok, in three, two….” He didn’t finish the count down before he gave a hard twist and with a metallic clunk, I let out a pained scream.

Right wing re-connected,” Flashed across my vision.

“Is everything ok down there?” Slick shouted down to us.

“We’re gonna need a hoist, Crystal dislocated her wing,” Fruited called back up.

“I guess flying will be out of the question until I’ve had time to repair,” I sighed and cringed with pain as I spread and retracted both wings. My left wing however, was very sluggish in its movements thanks to the hit on the joint.

A few minutes later, I was sat down on a stretcher lowered down from the overhead platform and being hefted up. I figured they wouldn’t be able to haul up my full robotic weight so I spread my wings with the intention to fly but without actually flying. Spreading my wings as if to fly seemed to trigger the levitation talismans embedded in my wings which would reduce or cancel out my weight so the ponies above could lift me without any problems. It’s the drain from these talismans that feeds from my secondary power core which also explains why it is also one of those self-replenishing ones I have too. Once back on the station platform we were greeted by Slick.

“Are you ok Crys…?” He trailed off midsentence as his eyes widened and tilted his head to the side slightly as if to look at my side. It didn’t take a genius to know he’d noticed my new appendages as I folded them back to my sides.

I couldn’t help the nervous wing shuffle as I stepped off the stretcher. “Hi Slick, yeah, I’m ok now, thank you,” I gulped nervously.

He shook his head and straightened himself out; the shock he wore a moment ago was gone as he nodded. “That’s good, ugh, DJ PON-3 has expressed an interest in meeting the ‘Heroine of the West’ but, um, I’d suggest getting yourself looked at by the tower’s physician before going to meet him, your face is kinda a mess,” He said.

“Hang on; back up, ‘Heroine of the West?’” I asked with a raised eyebrow.

“You impressed the DJ by saving the Marejave from a Stable full of hallucinogenic gas,” He answered.

My eyes widened in shock and surprised that this DJ PON-3 was able to hear about that from across Equestria. “We just did what we thought was right,” I replied and looked to where I last seen Fruity only see he was missing. Where’d he go? Fruity soon reappeared by flying back onto the platform from below and he had my soaking stetson in his mouth. It was then that I realised it had fallen off my head. I smiled appreciatively to him and took the tattered wet hat with my hurting right wing and placed the it on my medical box and shotgun on my back.

“Wait, is your jaw made of metal?” Slick suddenly asked as he narrowed his eyes.

“Excuse me?”

“Bollocks!” Fruity sighed as he stepped closer. “I didn’t notice before because I was just happy that you were ok but yeah, the right side of your face is littered with cuts and you seem to have busted a blood vessel in your eye too. But like Slick said, a couple of your cuts are showing metal,”

“Oh…, err, should I?” I asked Fruity, not sure if I should reveal myself.

“No point in denying it now, he can clearly see it,” He groaned.

I gulped and sighed as I turned back to the cream armoured stallion. “I’m mostly robotic under my skin, that’s why you can see metal,”

“So, you’re some kind of cyber-pony?” He asked.

“Um, sure, let’s go with that,” I said, not entirely sure if I was considered something like that or something else but it was the best thing I’ve heard of so far that I could be related to for now.

“Huh, well aren’t you full of surprises. Anyway, the DJ is expecting you, oh and try to keep your cybernetic side hidden from the populace. They may tolerate you a bit more now since the DJ gave you praise for your actions out west, but they are still iffy about zebras and knowing you’re a cyber-pony will rile them up even more,”

“And you are not at all surprised by this?” Fruity asked.

“Of course I am. She was covered head to hoof in skin and fur, how was I supposed to have any inkling that she was a tin can? But anyway, it’s not uncommon for a cyber-pony to be out here. We’ve met and dealt with our own fair share so we are no strangers to them. And you having wings makes a whole lot more sense now,” Slick replied.

“Well, I’m happy you’re so understanding,” I smiled, completely ignoring the ‘tin can’ comment.

“No problem,” He replied dismissively as he walked over to a wooden guard post.

The other two guards were already in their positions on the station to guard the entrance to the tower. I decided to go to each of them and give them my thanks. They both said they were glad to have helped, the one known as Slugger seemed very happy to have helped as she got to use her monster of a rifle. My electronic brain didn’t recognise it so the giant anti-power armour rifle must have appeared after it was installed into my head. Once all thanks were given we made our way into the tower. As soon as we pushed through the double doors, we were immediately assaulted by a black and white striped missile that aimed right for me.

You’re alive and ok!” Xian cried in zebrican with tears running down her cheeks as she crashed into my forelegs and hugged them pretty tightly and began to cry anew. I sat on my haunches and held the weeping filly, gently stroking her mane reassuringly with my free forehoof.

“Yes Xian, I’m ok, a little banged up but I’m fine, it’s ok now,” I gently cooed to help sooth her.

Fruity sat down beside me, wrapping a wing around my back while also gently rubbing a hoof on filly’s back as well. I smiled at him, happy to see how much he’d bonded with the filly during the train journey.

“Don’t worry kidda, Crystal is a tough mare, it’s gonna take a lot to put her down,” He assured her.

I nodded in agreement. “Don’t worry now, we are all together again,” I smiled before standing up and noticing a bathroom just up ahead. “Oh, would you excuse me for a moment while I clean my face,”

“Sure, take your time,” Fruity smiled, giving me a quick nuzzle on the cheek before I quickly made my way to the toilets and entered the mares restroom.

Unlike the tower from what I could remember of our first visit, the toilets between the station and the tower itself were disgusting, like nopony had maintained them since the world came to an end. The walls were grimy, a couple of the sinks were broken or cracked, the same went for the wall of mirrors above the sinks and the stalls were either missing doors or the toilet that was supposed to be inside. However the worst thing of all was the smell. Oh sweet Celestia the smell. I’ve smelt some awful things, especially since I’ve been in and out of hospitals all my life and they liked to use a load of chemicals and some of them were horrible on the nose. This though, this was truly decay and it was foul beyond words.

After a minute of being stunned at the door I scrunched up my nose, wiped my eyes with the tip each wing because the foul odour was making my eyes water and walked over to an intact sink which thankfully sat beneath an intact mirror. The mirror was coated in a thick layer of grime and barely reflected anything. With a sigh, I looked around for anything I could use to wipe it with and found a medical box next to a paper towel dispenser. A quick trot over to them sadly revealed that the paper towels had long since turned to pulp. The medical box however had something I could use, a roll of bandages but nothing to wipe the mirror with. With a sigh, I resigned myself to checking the stalls.

“Is everything ok in there, you haven’t fallen down the loo or anything have you?” Fruity called in.

I snorted in amusement. “Heh, no, it just filthy in here,” I called back.

“I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, welcome to the wasteland,”

I nodded, wasteland, that term was getting more and more familiar with me as the days went by. I still find it hard to believe but I’ve gradually accepted I’m not in the same chaotic world I was in before I ‘died’ but it would seem I’m in an even worse and deadly one.

I pulled open a stall door and let out a high pitched scream as a skeleton of a long dead pony collapsed in front of me. It would have landed on me if I didn’t backpedal as soon as I seen it. I held a hoof to my chest, feeling my heart hammer inside my chest from the fright while I tried to calm myself back down.

“Are you alright?!” Fruity asked as he slid on the tiled floor after running into the room.

“F-fine, just… startled,” I panted.

“Ah, sorry but you’re gonna have to get used to seeing shit like that in a city like this,” Fruity said when he noticed the freshly fallen skeleton now scattered on the floor.

I nodded before I glared at him. “What are you doing in here, this is the fillies room, get out,” I shooed him with a flap of a wing.

He left the room snickering and saying something about pre-war mares but I didn’t hear him. Instead, I again focused on the fallen skeleton and noticed that it was wearing what used to be a shirt of some kind and the fabric had mostly survived. I gulped down my trepidation as I approached the long dead pony. I began to lean down as if to grab the shirt with my teeth but stopped; as much as I wanted to I just couldn’t bring myself to touch it with my mouth. With a pathetic whine I instead resorted to using my nano-fiber tail to grasp the cloth and pick it up. I turned around to put my back to the skeleton as I lifted the shirt so I didn’t have to see the bones shifted and closed my ears against my skull to try and block the movement of the bones as they clattered to the floor. Once all the bones were free from the shirt, I looked back at the bones.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered quietly before using the old shirt to wipe the grime from the mirror.

It took a few good wipes with the rag to clear away a good portion of the built up grime but eventually I cleared away a big enough area so I could clearly see myself. Slick and Fruity were right; the right side of my face was a mess though the damage was mostly on the far right side from my chin up along the side of my head towards my ear. I had a few small scratches that weren’t of any problem but I did have some rather deepish looking gouges, all but one of them revealing metal. The bottom of my chin, the bottom of my jaw line and on my cheekbone was where I had gouges that revealed hints of metal. It made sense that those areas revealed my endoskeletal skull, really since those points had the thinnest layer of skin. My right eye was also very red, just like they had said about a burst blood vessel in it. I reached out with a hoof for one of the taps on the sink and as I twisted it, the pipes rattled and grumbled before a muddy sludge like substance was spat out of the tap before it began to sputter water out. I was surprised that this ruined bathroom still had running water and when the flow stabilised, I was even more surprised to find out that the water was clean since running my hoof under the cool water didn’t send my PipBuck ticking. I guess it was from the same water main as the rest of the tower which is why it’s still clean water.

I spent a couple of minutes using my wings as improvised brushes as the soft feathers felt good against my sore skin and rather soothing. After cleaning the cuts and wiping away the blood, I used the bandages I had found and wrapped them around my head to hide the exposed sections. I chuckled once I was finished; I kinda looked like one of those cartoon characters after going to a dentist because of the bandages going around my head. After a quick once over to be sure I hadn’t missed anything I put my damp hat back onto my head and re-joined Fruity and Xian so we could continue into the tower.

The moment all of us entered the tower’s main floor, everypony noticed us and the noise of chatter and local banter immediately went silent as everypony stared at us. Nervousness began to creep back into me as I felt the eyes of everypony on me and Xian also felt the pressure as she squeezed herself between my legs to hide under me. The only pony nonplussed by the sudden silence was Fruity. The purple pegasus smiled as he stepped forward to stand at the guard rail surrounding the walkway and looked down into the core of the tower.

“It’s good to be back,” He said.

Gradually, the ponies of the tower began to continue their business while giving us a wide berth. I couldn’t help but look at some of those closest to use and see the looks of disgust as they looked at me. Even here zebras are treated with great prejudice.

“Oh great somepony let a Stripe in again,”

“The guards are getting soft if they let gutter filth like that in here,”

“What a barbarian, no clothes, just guns and armour,”

Those were just some of the comments I could pick up as ponies walked along around us. It hurt to think that society had fallen so far, sure we had a racial problem back before the bombs fell, but before everypony actively hated each other like this, we actually lived and worked together well. Hell, there were even some zebra and pony couples that were doing quite well before the war happened.

“I’m tempted to get some fish’n’chips,” Fruity said as he looked down to the group of eateries on the lower floor.

“Maybe later, aren’t we expected by DJ-PON3?” I asked.

“Oh good, you’re the ponies I’ve come to find,” A friendly voice said from behind us.

I quickly turned around, startled by the sudden new voice and as we turned to face the speaker we found a unicorn stallion that appeared to be in his senior years but it would seem age had been kind to him or he wasn’t that old. The stallion was still an average build and size for an old pony, though his brown coat looked slightly faded and his mane and tail was now a pure silvery colour from age, any trace of an original colour had been lost. His eyes however were a deep blue and seemed to portray years of wisdom and strength that didn’t seem to fit his current appearance.

“You were looking for us?” Fruity asked.

“Yes, DJ-PON3 had asked me to come and collect you,” He answered with a friendly smile. “My name is Silver Disc, I’m his assistance,”

“Aren’t you a little old to be an assistant?” Fruity asks with a raised eyebrow.

“Ha, I may no longer be any spring chicken anymore, I think that’s how the old saying went, but I’m still hoofticapable,” He said with a good natured laugh.

I smiled; glad to meet somepony who was friendly at least. “Nice to meet you Silver, my name is Crystal and this is Xian,” I introduced myself and the young filly that was peeking up at him from under my chest piece. “I don’t think I need to introduce Fruity since he’s been here before multiple times,”

Silver let out a soft laugh. “And nopony could forget the infamous drunk sex machine,” He said with a good natured chuckle. “You should really watch what those mares put in your drinks,”

“Huh?” Fruity asked confused.

“Let’s just say the fountain incident was because of a little extra in your beer,”

Fruity groaned and hid his face in his wing as he muttered something about, “Oldest trick in the book,”

Silver Disc chuckled. “You don’t have to worry about that happening again as her ‘stock’ has been destroyed, anyway, back on the original subject, are you ready to meet the good DJ?”

“Yes actually, we were hoping to come see him as there is something we need help with,” I said.

He nodded as he turned around. “Well I’m sure he’ll be all ears to listen and to help you anyway he can,”

We followed Silver as he led us over a bridge that took us to the central shaft where a series of lifts were built into the shaft. The old pony pressed the call button for the centre lift and the doors opened immediately.

“After you,” Silver said as he stepped aside to let us on first.

“Thank you,” I smiled at his manners and boarded the lift which groaned ominously as it took my weight.

“I hope that’s not a sign that this needs servicing again,” The old stallion groaned as he boarded after us and pressed the button for the very top floor. “I’m sure Sparks said he had this thing purring like a kitten,”

The lift jerked and shuddered as it began to ascend higher into the tower, groaning loudly as it was pulled higher.

“Crystal, can you do something?” Fruity whispered to me discretely.

“I’ll try,” I replied quietly. I leaned down to whisper into Xian’s ear, asking her to sit beside me so I could drape a wing over her shoulders. While I did that, Fruity struck up a conversation with Silver Disc to keep him pre-occupied so he wouldn’t notice anything unusual about what I was doing. With my wing extended and around the filly’s shoulders, I concentrated and the power bar appeared in my HUD showing that the levitation talismans were starting to consume power. With one wing reducing my overall weight, the jerking motion and the heavy groaning of the lift soon stopped and the ride became much smoother.

“Hmm, just an off day I suppose,” Silver said as he looked up at the ceiling.

We gave a nervous chuckle at Silver’s remark before I let out a soft groan and lifted a hoof to the right side of my face and rubbed at the bandaged area. Shortly after putting the bandages on to hide the exposed metal an itchy sensation had been building and it had been getting difficult to ignore.

“You ok?” Fruity asked as he noticed.

“Just feeling a little itchy is all, it’s nothing,” I assured him.

The lift ride took another few minutes to reach the very top. To pass the time, we basically talked about everything and nothing, just general things happening around here and outside the tower. It was a little education for me to learn about some of what was out there as we passed the time but as those doors opened Xian and I couldn’t get out of that small cramped space fast enough. I’m not claustrophobic but being stuck in the lift for soooo long would be enough to make anypony go stir-crazy.

Silver led us down a short corridor from the lift which ended at a single door that was guarded by a large ceiling mounted laser turret. He opened the door and beckoned us through quickly. We were awestruck when entered the room through the door, it was actually a giant apartment at the top of the tower, um, the penthouse suite presume. Everything looked old and grand, large bookshelves and tables, a telescope, a bed and even a kitchen was up here. The floor in front of the door had a huge Ministry of Arcane Science mosaic built into the floor as well. Did this tower have some relation to the MoAS?

“So, where’s Mr DJ?” Fruity asked as he looked around trying to find the illusive pony.

The door clicked shut and Silver’s demeanour changed completely. As he turned to face us, his carefree smile was replaced with a confident smile and his posture was a lot stronger now. His eyes felt sharper and the years of wisdom they carried seemed to intensify.

“Now that we’re all here and alone let me truly introduce myself, I am, DJ-PON3, the jockey of holotapes, the teller of truths, lord and master of the greatest radio station to ever grace the Equestrian Wasteland, Celestial News Radio,” He proclaimed strongly with a confident, deep and charismatic voice.

“So you are Silver Disc and DJ-PON3?” I asked a little confused.

He laughed lightly. “That’s right, it’s been a tradition since the first DJ-PON3 who set up this radio station so that the populace never actually knows who the pony behind the voice really is. I took over from the last DJ over forty years ago,”

“Wow,” Was all I could say to that, it was amazing such a thing was still going.

“I actually wanted to have an interview with you two regarding your journey out west, everything I’ve heard and seen so far paint you two in a very positive light which is good as ponies like you are sorely needed in this world and come in short supply,” Silver said in his new stronger voice. “But you said you came looking for me specifically and you look like you don’t want to hang around, so, what can I do for you?”

“I’m sorry, maybe we can have our interview after we’ve been to where we need to go,” I said to which he nodded. I smiled at that. “Ok um, we were hoping you would be able to tell us where we could find a place in this city called “Paradigm Cybernetics”, it’s very important that we find this place,”

“Paradigm Cybernetics?” He asked. I nodded. Silver Disc shook his head sadly. “I’m sorry Crystal, but I do not know where that is,” I frowned and felt my heart sink. “However I have heard that name before and I should be able to find it,”

I brightened up at that. “Oh if you can find it that would mean a lot,”

“Hmm perhaps we could help each other out. Trade helps the wasteland after all,”

I nodded, that sounded reasonable. “Ok, what can we do for you?” I asked.

“Thank you, ok two weeks ago a salvage team was sent out to gather supplies for the tower in general, a salvage team is usually away for about a week but they didn’t come back after the expected time. Unfortunately, they never came back after giving them a few extra days so we believe them to be dead. They were last seen heading back towards the tower from Checkpoint Glimmer and you would be doing the tower a great favour if you could see if you can find any trace of the missing team and find out what may have happened to them,” He explained.

“Checkpoint Glimmer?” Fruity asked.

“Yes, there is an area around this tower that is generally a safe zone. At the perimeter of this safe zone we have a series of checkpoints that relay sightings of possible threats, like that sniper. He was spotted coming into the area from the east by Checkpoint Mall,”

“I see, so that’s why you had more guards and a sniper on the station,” Fruity clarified.

Silver nodded. “The Raiders have been getting a little bolder these days,” He sighed.

“Ok, so where is this checkpoint we need to go to?” I asked.

Silver chuckled as he walked over to one of the large windows lining the wall of the penthouse. “You can’t miss it, it practically tells you where it is,” He said while looking out the window.

We followed him over to the window and looked out and we both spotted it rather quickly. Just north of Tenpony was another sky scraper, this one shaped more triangular and looked to be one of those mostly steel and glass buildings. What caught our eye the most about the building was its top most area, it had a large balcony area as well as a large platform above the balcony which I assumed to be a landing pad and along the upper most wall it held a large neon sign which was still mostly working. In bright pinkish purple neon was the word “Glimmer”, and just before that it looked like there was a large circular piece but it appears to have long since fallen away.

“Wait a minute, I know that place,” I gasped in realisation.

“You do?” Both Fruity and Silver asked in unison.

“Um, yes, I remember seeing the news talking about its grand opening. That’s the head office of Starlight Industries,” I replied. “Um, I guess you’ll understand when we get back we can have our interview then,”

DJ-PON3 nodded.

I felt Xian brush up against my leg and I looked down. The poor filly was scared. She could understand equestrian well enough now to know that we were heading out and into that city even after I was shot down not long ago. I wouldn’t like to expose her to that just yet, not after the scare she’s just had.

“Err, Mr Disc, um or do you prefer DJ-PON3?” I asked unsure.

“Either one is fine,” He said with a friendly smile.

“If it’s ok with you, could you do us a favour and look after Xian until we get back please, I don’t want to risk her safety until we know this city better?”

He looked down at the young filly and gave a soft smile. “Sure, it’s good to see how much you care for her welfare,”

You don’t want me?” Xian cried in zebrican after hearing we were going to leave her here.

I sat on my haunches and gently held her shoulders and bend my head down so I could look her in the eye. Hearing that almost broke my heart. “Hey, no, it is not because I don’t want you at all, far from it. You are a sweet and innocent little filly and you have been just wonderful since you came with us and I’d be happy for you to stay with us. Really! But right now, this is unfamiliar territory and I could not forgive myself if something was to happen to you,” I swallowed down hard to keep my composure. “You, you know what I am, I can take things you can’t, until we know we can protect you out there, it’ll be safer for you if you wait for us here with Silver Disc where it is safe, ok?

You promise to come back for me?” She practically begged.

I stroked her mane with a forehoof and gently kissed her forehead. “Of course I promise, I would never do what your tribe did to you,” I replied honestly.

The young filly teared up and hugged me. I smiled and gently wrapped her up in a hug, wings included. After a long moment we broke the embrace.

“I didn’t know what you two said but I did hear my name,” Silver said. I gave Xian a reassuring kiss on the forehead before I let her go. The filly reluctantly walked over to him.

“I was just reassuring her that we’ll be back for her, that’s all,” I told him.

He nodded as Fruity and I made for the lift.

“Don’t worry, we’ll be back soon,” Fruity said, both to Silver and Xian as the lift doors closed.

XXXXX

In the late afternoon light the city was quite dark, especially with the stormy clouds up above us. Thankfully, it had stopped raining by the time we left the tower and climbed down to street level so we could make our way towards Starlight Tower where Checkpoint Glimmer was setup in its courtyard.

“Hey, are you ok?” Fruity asked as he gently bumped my flank while we cautiously walked up the street.

“Not really,” I answered honestly. “Besides feeling sore, I feel horrible about leaving her behind,”

“Hey, don’t beat yourself up over it; I’ve said it before that this isn’t really a place for a foal like her, you made the right choice in leaving her with somepony we can trust like DJ-PON3. Besides, once we do this we’ll be going back,”

I nodded and gave a weak smile before giving his cheek a kiss. “Hmm, you’re right,”

He draped a wing over my back and gave me a quick squeeze. “C’mon now, let’s focus on what we need to,”

I nodded. He’s right. I can’t dwell on these thoughts right now; they’ll pose as a distraction. I know Xian is somewhere safe right now and if I want to make it back to her I need to focus on what we’re doing.

Manehattan is so much different to Las Pegasus as the city is more tightly built up with its tall buildings and everything looks more for business rather than entertainment. None of the buildings we passed were that intact either as most had holes in their walls or had entire sides missing and spilled their contents all over the street. We had to detour a couple of times because a building had completely collapsed and blocked off the road with a mountain of concrete and steel or there was a deep trench which would have made scaling the other side impossible.

The more we travelled the streets the more I figured Xian wouldn’t be happy out here. Yes, she would be positively terrified. The state of the city was one thing but the eerie silence from the lack of other ponies was unsettling. The howl of the wind as it blew through the streets or the buildings was creepy and the horrible groans and whines from the buildings made us think that they could fall at any moment was enough to strengthen our belief. Not to mention I was certain I saw a giant cockroach that was as big a Germane Shepard and had a balefire glow to it, though I might have been seeing things: there’s no way a cockroach could be that big… could there?

After about an hour and a half of picking our way through the rubble strewn streets, we stepped out onto the street in front of Starlight Tower, the once head office of Starlight Industries. The massive glass and steel tower stretched up into the sky and illuminated the heavens with its pinkish purple neon while groaning loudly as the wind made its ancient metal frame flex and rattled what intact glass planes still desperately clung to their frames.

“They must have had some serious money to build a place like that,” Fruity commented just before there was a gun shot from the checkpoint in the court yard. I dove to the ground with a startled eep while Fruity threw a wing up in front of his face as an instinctive reaction before folding it back up. “Woah hey, chill, we are from Tenpony!” He yelled. “Dipshit,” He added in a whisper.

A cream unicorn mare with a light yellow mane and tail wearing an old Robronco jumpsuit quickly ran up to us with a hunting rifle trailing behind in her yellow magic. “I’m so so sorry,”

“No harm done,” Fruity said while I pulled myself up from the floor.

“No harm done?” I cried in annoyance while I shot the mare a glare. “She nearly shot us…”

“I’m sorry, my mother is asleep and you just came out of nowhere,” She responded apologetically.

It was then I realised the pony before us was just a teenager. “Ok, ok, calm down kid, I’m sorry, I didn’t realise you were scared,”

“Like I said, we are from Tenpony and we are looking into the disappearance of the salvage team,” Fruity said.

“Oh well in that case you’ll need to talk to my mum, she was the one that last seen and reported them to the tower,” She said as she turned around. “Oh, my name is Custard Cream by the way,”

I smiled warmly at the young mare in attempt to help her relax. “It’s nice to meet you Miss Cream, my name is Crystal and this is Fruity,” The purple pegasus bowed his head at his introduction.

“It’s not often we see pegasi down here, I hope you aren’t with those Enclave lunatics,”

“Enclave has been down here?” Fruity asked with a hint of fear and curiosity.

“There have been a couple of sightings lately, not friendly to the locals either,” She sighed as we approached a tent. “Mum’s in here, I’ll go wake her,”

As she opened the tent flap we began to hear the low murmurs and moans of a pony during sex. Hearing this brought a blush to our cheeks and a war with our muscles to keep our wings under control. The moans suddenly stopped with a snort and a groan.

“Huh, what, Custard! I was in the middle of a lovely dream just then…,” The voice of an older mare tiredly said before trailing off. “Oh err; I wasn’t being loud was I?”

There was a moment of silence. I could only imagine Custard Cream’s face being a mirror of ours.

“Fuck, c’mon Chocolate Bourbon, you’re gonna freak everypony out with your vivid dreams,” The older mare said to herself out loud. “Anyway why did you wake me up?”

“There are a couple of ponies from Tenpony wanting to know about the missing salvage team,” Custard replied quickly.

“Oh,”

Thankfully, by the time a middle aged mare that had a brown coat and a dark brown mane and tail stepped out of the tent we had managed to get control of our wings and get rid of our blushes.

“So, how can I help you two?” Bourbon asked as she cocked her head, her eyes on me showing some suspicion. I am going to be getting the stink eye from most wastelanders out here?

“We know the salvage team passed by Checkpoint Glimmer on their way back to Tenpony Tower, anything you can tell us would greatly help us in our search for the missing team,” Fruity explained.

“Ok, well as they were carrying a trunk of collected supplies they would have had to head for Tenpony Tower’s south side rather than trying to lug it up to the station platform. The south side of the tower has a goods in loading bay which all salvage operations are collected from. To get to it from here you will need to go down that road there and down Saddle Row,” Bourbon said while pointing down the road. “They did go that way since we saw them go down there,”

“Thank you for your co-operation,” I said with a smile. “Have a pleasant afternoon,”

“Yeah, thanks, good bye,” Fruity added as we turned and began for Saddle Row as directed.

Shortly after we left the checkpoint, I groaned in annoyance and reached up to the bandages around my head and tugged them off. The itchiness had become unbearable and I was at my wits end on trying not to scratch. With the bandages off I felt blessed relief as the itchiness faded away.

“Oh that’s so much better,” I sighed.

“But everypony will be able to see the metal now,” Fruity pointed out.

I nodded with a sigh. “There is not much we can do about that now is there,” I gently ran my damaged hoof over the wounded area of my face. “Everypony is gonna know soon enough though right?”

“Maybe,” Fruity said but still concerned for me.

“We’ll deal with it as it happens like we have been doing since we started,”

Fruity nodded and gently gave me a slight squeeze with his wing to offer some comfort and support.

When we turned the corner onto the street the name of it finally hit me as I took in all of the boutiques lining the road on either side in various states of decay. I couldn’t believe it didn’t occur to me earlier. Saddle Row, the fashion capital of Equestria. I excitedly rushed up to the shops, briefly forgetting where I was and what I was doing as old desires rushed to the forefront of my mind. However as I ran from each boarded up door to the next my excitement turned to disappointment before I recollected myself and remembered it was hundred and ninety years since they were last open and that everything that was in there was now likely nothing but dust. I stopped my excited shop to shop dash outside a small store wedged between two larger ones called. “Rarity for You”

“Phew, ugh, what got into you, guh, you were like a mare possessed running around like that?” Fruity gasped as he panted, looking a little worn out after trying to keep up with me it seemed.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I… um, I just remembered an old dream of mine, one I’ve had when my mother promised me we’d come here for when…” I paused as I let out a sad sigh. “If I got better. Still just a dream,” I sat down and closed my eyes, fighting hard with my emotions to not let myself cry as the emotional force of that memory tried to overpower me.

Fruity sat beside me and wrapped his forelegs around me as well as his wings in a comforting hug. “Don’t worry, at least in your memory you can still remember her,” He said reassuringly.

He’s right; I can’t keep falling apart like this every time a memory of my past comes up. I need to fully get to grips with all this. “You’re right, thank you,” I said as I stood up but then winced and picked my right forehoof off the floor. “Ow,” I groaned in pain. My HUD warned me that the fracture was dangerously weak. Any attempt at putting my hoof down now made me wince with pain. I guess until it repairs I’m walking on three legs.

“You ok?” Fruity asked with concern.

“I am, just overdid it with the running,”

Fruity nodded. “Too bad a healing potion won’t help with that,” He said as he looked around Saddle Row and his face twisted into a scowl. “Does the fact that EVERY shop on this street apart from this one being boarded up strike you as odd?” He asked. “And that tower crane there wasn’t blocking the street the last time I was here,”

“Huh?” I said as I too looked around. Sure enough each store I had ran up to had had its door boarded up and every other store that we can see was also boarded up to prevent access. The only shop that wasn’t was Rarity for You.

“With that tower crane blocking the road the salvage team would have had to either back track past the checkpoint which Cream or Bourbon mentioned they didn’t do or they found a way through this still open shop,” Fruity suggested. “But with the fact that this is the only shop still open I’m a bit suspicious,”

“Um, I don’t think tower cranes use grappling hooks,” I said with narrowed eyes as I stared at the twisted rusty yellow painted metal frame of the downed crane spanning the width of the street.

“Wait what?”

I pointed to the frame nearest to the buildings on the right side of the street, opposite to where the crane had been standing and us. “Can you see them, there are two, three pronged hooks still hooked onto the framed with some rope dangling from them,” I said while pointing out the two grapple hooks.

“This looks like something Raiders would do,” Fruity said seriously.

I nodded and then faced the door to Rarity for You. “I guess the team went through here then,”

“We need to be cautious, if this was indeed Raiders there is no telling what could be in there,” Fruity said as he swung his modified Q-Modulator down from his back and held it under his wing. A shift from his wing triggered the weapon’s power button and it primed up ready to fire. I nodded and followed his example and used my nano-fibre tail to reach into the holster on my right foreleg and picked out Lucky 13.

I limped up to the door and gently pushed against it with my damaged foreleg. Thankfully, the door was open and didn’t apply too much pressure on it to cause pain while I opened the door.

The faded and cracked dark green painted door creaked opened to reveal a very murky and dark shop floor. It was hard to see because of how dark it was inside with how the windows were boarded up or had what remained of the curtains still hanging from the rails so only a minimal amount of light was getting in. The light from the door was the most we were getting. The middle of the shop floor was dominated by two U shaped counters back to back so they made an oval shape in the middle with a gap separating them. The counters had several cash registers dotted about; a couple of them were on their sides with their drawers open like they had been looted. The faded purple walls were dominated by shelves and racking while the alcoves in the corners had display cases (smashed to bits) and ponyequins with old tattered shreds of what used to be a top of the range outfits on them.

“Anything?” Fruity asked as he tried to peer into the dark and murky shop.

“I can’t see anything out of the ordinary, although there is an open door in the back,” I replied, squinting my eyes to see better.

“We better tread lightly, for all we know Raiders or whoever pulled that damn crane down booby-trapped this place,”

I nodded in agreement as we entered the old abandoned shop. Fruity crept to the right to walk around the far side of the counter while I continued forward towards the door. While I was passing the counter, I noticed a large wooden sign hanging from the ceiling which spanned the width of the checkout counter and it read in big flashy script. “’Rarity for You’ under new ownership.” Next to the word “Ownership” there was faded photograph with a name. The photograph was still good enough to make out and it was of a light yellow earth pony mare with a short and straight cyan mane. This was a mare that many ponies got to know in the fashion industry before the war overshadowed everything, this was Coco Pommel, a shy but very talented seamstress for an earth pony. I knew she was made the manager here but to think she would become its owner, I didn’t see that coming.

We made it to the open door in the back without incident and we also discovered that there was another door that was open to our left that was hidden from view before as it was in an alcove.

“Should we check it out?” I asked while looking at the open door to our left, my tail holding my revolver over my head but pointing at the open side door.

Priming his rifle Fruity took the lead. “Might as well just in case we miss something from the salvage team,” He said as he walked in front of me, the green glow from his, well it’s basically a plasma assault rifle now, illuminated the hallway. The hallway was short, a darker shade of purple and had several doorways, two doorless frames on the right and a closed door on the left. The doorless ones were changing rooms and I saw a harrowing sight in the first one. There was a whole family lying dead inside the changing room, their skeletons huddled together in a tight embrace as if they could shield each other from the balefire with their embrace. The worst sight in this was the tiny skeleton in between the adult ones. A mere infant foal died in its parents hooves when Equestria burned. It made me think of Xian, how much I’ve grown to care for her and how much I don’t want to see her get hurt out here; I could never forgive myself otherwise if she did.

Fruity sighed deeply. “It’s worse when seeing the skeletons of kids,” He said solemnly. I just nodded, unable to say anything further.

The other changing room was empty beside an oddly out of place ammo box which thankfully gave me a dozen shells for my shotgun and the closed door opened into a small store room, but unfortunately there was no sign of the salvage team.

After a quick backtrack, we walked through the door in the back of the shop. Once through the threshold we found ourselves in another hallway with a backdoor at the end, a door to our right and stairs on the left near the backdoor. To speed things up we decided to split up, Fruity went up the rest of the hallway while I entered the room to our right, my gun still raised above my head in preparation to defend myself if necessary.

The room was dirty and old, obviously, and if I didn’t know any better I swear I could smell gas coming from somewhere. However, this room looked like it was the place where Coco or whoever else that once worked here used to make the clothing that was sold here as there were old sewing equipment sitting on tables and on cabinets as well as old utensils like needles and what remained of the spools of thread. The room also appeared to be arranged into separate work stations as there were dividing walls between each station. Walking between each one, I found nothing of interest other than more pulp and dirt of long decayed fabric and no signs of the salvage team but as I walked around the last dividing wall I found a skeleton of a pony slumped against its desk with a display case. Inside the case was a burgundy trench coat with a red belt and black buttons and buckle, it also had a set of knee high midnight purple hind leg boots with red highlights to go with it. Next to the case lying on the table close to the skeleton’s skull was the remains of a wide brimmed hat that was the same midnight purple, despite the decay and grime all over it, and there was also what looked like small shreds of a red ribbon that went around its base. A closer inspection revealed a small plaque that read. “Noir Belle, reproduction by Coco Pommel.”

I gasped in shock and surprise after I read the plaque and looked at the skeleton. For all I know it could belong to Coco Pommel, she could have died when the world ended while trying to put the finishing touches to her latest assemble. Or it could be just some random looter trying to make off with it. I stared at the skeleton for a short while, wondering whether or not if it was her or not before looking back at the coat and boats.

“If it is her, it would be a shame to leave these here to eventually rot and to go unappreciated,” I reasoned. “Plus I need a new coat after my duster got shredded,”

Making up my mind on the principal the outfit would be better off with me and that it’s no longer considered stealing when it’s no longer owned. I reached forward with my wings, I noticed the stiffness in my left wing had lessened a bit by now, and opened the display case door. With the coat and boats extracted, I carefully folded the coat around the boats and slipped them under my medical box to transport them safely. I couldn’t exactly try them on as we had more important things to do.

“Crystal, it is no good on this end,” Fruity called from in the hallway.

Keeping my gun raised I quickly made my way back out into the hall. “What’s up?” I asked while I limped up the hallway to join him.

“It’s all collapsed about halfway up the stairs and I’m sure there’s a busted gas pipe somewhere because this place reeks of it,”

I nodded. “I thought I could smell gas,” I confirmed.

“Ok, so unless you found anything we’ll have to continue on into the back alley,”

“No, nothing, but I did find a new coat,”

Fruity nodded and we then turned and headed for the back door. Again, Fruity went first and I began to follow after him. Just as my hindhoof was about to pass the threshold I felt it catch on something and paused.

“Crystal, very carefully, put your hoof back down,” Fruity cautioned very seriously.

I cringed but couldn’t help but look back behind me and to my despair I found that my hindhoof had caught onto a well concealed tripwire which Fruity had been lucky enough to have stepped over. I could feel my heartrate increase with panic when I looked up at the ceiling above the door in an attempt to find what the tripwire was connected to. Hidden inside a lampshade above the door were three apple shaped frag-grenades which I could only assume were what were connected to this tripwire. I whimpered with fear as I began to slowly push my hoof back to undo any tension I may have put onto the wire but my abysmal luck struck again as the wire snapped and those three grenades dropped to the floor with a clatter without their pins.

“Oh shit, run, RUN!” Fruity yelled. We both broke into a sprint as fast as we could go down the alley. “Run like the clappers!”

“I’m running,” I cried in pain. My vision alerting me to my fetlock fracture integrity decreasing.

There was then a large explosion as the three grenades went off at once and at the sound of the grenades going off we dove behind the wall of the nearest ginnel between two buildings we could find that could offer some form of shelter. Almost instantly after the grenades, there was then an immensely bigger explosion as the grenades ignited the gas and the resulting gas explosion then obliterated Rarity for You and the two stores that flanked it.

“Duck and cover!” Fruity yelled over the explosion and we both threw ourselves to the floor and used our wings to cover ourselves the best we could. Thankfully, the ginnel we had dove into protected us from the explosive shockwave of the gas explosion and since it was a narrow gap it also gave some protection from the raining debris which consisted mostly of bricks, burning pieces of wood and glass since the shockwave from the blast shattered all the windows in the area.

“First day back and we destroy a building,” I muttered to myself dejectedly.

“WHAT?!” Fruity yelled down my earhole.

“Geez, don’t yell, I’m only here,” I cried out as I jerked my head back and rubbed at my ear.

“CAN’T HEAR YOU TOO GOOD OVER ALL THIS DAMN RINGING!” Fruity yelled while he too rubbed at his ears. I blinked for a moment before I realised what was wrong with him. The explosion must have hurt his hearing so he was partially deaf because of the ringing in his ears. Odd my hearing is still ok, but I suppose my hearing would be fine considering what I am.

We waited for about ten minutes to be sure everything had stopped raining rubble before we stepped back out into the alleyway and surveyed the damaged. Rarity for You was completely gone and the two shops that were flanking it were half demolished and falling into themselves. We could see broken and pulverised masonry and wood scattered about everywhere but it was more prominent in the directions of the forces of the blast which, because of the buildings beside Rarity for You, were in front and behind it.

“Wow,” I breathed out in amazement.

“Shit, good job we don’t have to clean this up,” Fruity said although a little loudly.

“How are your ears?” I asked.

“I can hear again ok, just gonna be ringing for a while,” He said with a nostalgic smile. “Heh, reminds me of the first gig I went to back up in Nimbus Town when I was a teenager to see a rock band called the Shadow-Terrors,” He let out a light chuckle. “My ears were ringing for three days straight because they were so loud,” His smile soon faded and turned into a sad frown as he looked up to the rolling dark clouds above us. “I wonder if my family is doing ok up there?” He asked absentmindedly.

I frowned sadly for him and gently wrapped my right wing around him and held him while he reminisced. “I’m sure they are doing ok Fruity,”

He leaned against me and then nuzzled my cheek, being careful not to disturb the wounds. “Yes, I believe they are too and besides. If I didn’t get banished I’d probably be bad alcoholic right now and I wouldn’t have met you,” He said with a light kiss to my wounded cheek.

“Aww, that’s sweet of you to say,” I smiled warmly before looking down the alleyway that led towards the tower. “Ok, we should follow the alley for now; if the salvage team was ambushed we’ll find something somewhere,”

“Agreed and we should hurry, it’s starting to get dark,”

My eyes widened.

“You remember what happened the night we met?” Fruity asked as we began to walk down the alley, inspecting dead grassy tufts and piles of rubbish littering it for anything that could point us to the salvage team.

“I do, we got attacked by giant bats,” I said with a shiver.

We walked for about five minutes before Fruity shot a wing out in front of me to stop me. “Hold up,” He said in a warning tone.

“W-what is it?” I asked, looking around trying to find a hostile target despite my EFS being clear.

“Mines” He said simply as he began to flap his wings and hover a few feet off the ground.

“Mines?” I asked looking at the ground. I squinted, looking for the tell tail sign of the orange glow from the top of the explosive but I couldn’t see anything. I did see a lot of traffic cones dotted about the place and other miscellaneous junk though.

Fruity swung his rifle forward so he could grip it with his forelegs and took aim before firing a short burst of three small plasma bolts. I got to see how much more effective his weapon had become after his upgrades because before the upgrades the single plasma bolt was slow moving but these three smaller ones were at least twice as fast and the way the rifled kicked back further, it must pack quite a punch now. The burst of plasma fire hit one of the traffic cones which to my surprise suddenly exploded.

“What the?!” I exclaimed in confusion.

“Old Raider trick, and give away. They sometimes hide landmines under traffic cones. They use cones so THEY know where they put their own mines, the dumb shits,”

“If there are traps here then we must be on the right track,” I called up to him.

He nodded as he aimed at another cone and fired another burst which triggered another explosion and also set off another as it was close enough to trigger it.

I decided to help him out and lifted my revolver back up over my head and aimed at the cones he wasn’t. Firing Lucky 13 with my tail for the first time was new and I didn’t know how to handle the recoil so when the weapon discharged its .357 round the revolver flipped over one hundred and eighty degrees in my tail’s grip. Thankfully, my tail’s aim was good as the bullet hit the mine hidden in the base of the cone and exploded it.

We must have exploded about a dozen mines by the time we came to a waste collection point in the alley. It was wider than the alley by, like a lot and had street access for the waste disposal vehicles. Against the walls of the buildings around us in this area were large dumpsters but a large metal trunk caught our attention lying on its side in the middle of the waste disposal area.

“Is that it?” I asked.

“It could be,” Fruity nodded.

We quickly scanned the area to be sure there weren’t any unwanted surprises waiting for us and once we were satisfied, we cautiously walked up to the upturned trunk. It lay wide open and was empty apart from the items that would generally be useless by today’s standard. The trunk also had patches of dried blood on it which told us the salvage team had been ambushed and have likely been killed.

“Here’s the trunk…” Fruity began.

“But where are the ponies?” I finished.

We cautiously looked around until Fruity spotted blood splatters on the side of a closed dumpster. He lifted the lid and peered into the bin for a few seconds before jumping away, gagging.

“Found them,” He wheezed. “Damn they stunk so bad,”

“I guess that’s job done then, we head back to the tower?” I asked.

Fruity shook his head. “Not just yet, Raiders got in here unseen, we got to at least have a look and see how they managed it as well as killing a whole salvage crew without being heard from here. We can’t be too far from Checkpoint Glimmer, there is no way they wouldn’t be able to hear a gunshot from here,”

I nodded after a moment’s thought on the matter. He was right, we owe it to the next crew to at least give them some sort of advanced warning if we can find out how these Raiders snuck past a checkpoint and killed a whole team silently.

I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary besides the trunk and blood splatters on the dumpster on the ground and so, on a whim I looked up. Looking up at the gutters of the buildings around us I soon spotted something that looked to be the feathered end of an arrow sticking out of the gutter of the building behind us.

“Fruity, what’s that?” I asked as I pointed up at the item that caught my interest with a wing.

The purple pegasus looked up and spotted the odd looking stick. “I have no idea,” He said as he slung his rifle and took to the air, climbing up to the gutter to be level with the feather like end. “Its… it’s a metal arrow,” He called down to me sounding confused.

“Huh, a metal arrow?” I repeated, unsure of what to make of that.

“Hang on,” He said as he bit onto the metal arrow with his teeth and pulled. He strained while he flapped his wings hard to pull the offending item free.

“Maybe you should…”I began but was cut off as the arrow came free and Fruity nearly fell out of the air as the sudden release of tension made him lose control for a moment. “Never mind,”

He spat the metal arrow, which indeed it was, onto the ground as he landed. “Damn thing nearly made me go ass over tit and I think I chipped a tooth,” He whined as he ran his tongue over his teeth after spitting it out.

“You look ok to me,” I smiled before I looked down at the offending piece of metal. This was a metal arrow alright but not the kind of arrow you’d fire from a bow with a draw string, no, this was a crossbow bolt. “Fruity, this is a crossbow bolt, something fired from a standard pre-war Royal Guard Crossbow before they were replaced by the firearms we have now,” Since my electronic brain had fed me some information about the arrow and what fired it.

“A crossbow huh, I can see how that’ll be quiet,” He nodded. “So we now know what killed them, but where did the Raiders come from?” He asked.

“Hmm, good question, well, if earlier today was any indication they could have come from anywhere,”

“True but they would have had to get out with a good haul of crap from this,”

“Point taken, Raiders with a large stash of junk wouldn’t be hard to miss, so they must have found some way to sneak out,” I suggested.

“They couldn’t fly out as they’d be easily seen, sneaking out fully loaded would be too troublesome and would slow them down, so that leaves going underground,”

As Fruity said “Underground” we both turned our heads to look down the wide ginnel that acted as the street access road for the waste vehicles and in the middle of it was a ponyhole cover that was slightly out of place, just sticking up at one end, like it had recently been disturbed.

“I wonder,” I whispered to myself as I holstered Lucky 13 and approached the grid. With one foreleg out of commission and the other needed to support me I instead used my tail to grip the raised edge of the metal disc and flipped it over. Upon peering down into the sewer beneath us, I instantly regretted it.

“Oh mother of Celestia and Luna,” I gasped. “I found another member of the salvage team, looks like they landed on a Raider too but, oh goddesses, they are half eaten,”

Down at the bottom of the shaft the bodies of two ponies lay on top of each other in various states of decay but both of them looked like they had been mauled by something. The one on top was the worst, half its face was eaten down to the bone and its eye was missing.

“The sewers, no, wait yes, oh this is bigger than anything that could be monitored by the guards or the checkpoints,” Fruity exclaimed.

“What do you mean?” I asked as I turned to look at my coltfriend.

“If these Raiders are stupid and ballsy enough to use the sewers or the metro under the city then they could come up pretty much anywhere in the city. There is just no way the checkpoints would be able to guard against that,”

“Oh dear, you’re right, we better get back and tell Slick and Silver Disc about this,”

“And fast, we don’t want to be out here when those Bloodwings come out again,”

“I can’t run, anymore pressure and my fetlock is gonna shatter,” I whimpered.

“Hmm, open your wings and do that thing that makes you weightless,” Fruity instructed.

“Um, ok, but why?” I asked while I opened my wings and concentrated so the levitation talismans reduced my weight. Fruity smiled and winked before he lifted off the ground and flew over me and then wrapped his forelegs around my chest and his hind legs around my waist. I blushed slightly from the full body hug he was giving me, but then eeped as he pulled me off the ground and began to fly with me under him. I felt a little uncomfortable being the passenger like this but we were already flying fast and through the streets back towards the tower so I kept quiet.

We should be flying, not being somepony’s hoof luggage,” That voice I heard in my head before I crashed said with a scoff. Come to think of it, being unable to fly had been giving me a niggling feeling in the back of my head and if I wasn’t focused on the task of finding out what happened to the salvage team I think I would have been thinking about flying. Is this what it’s like to be a pegasus, to feel the need to fly at nearly every waking moment or is this something else, maybe to do with the voice I’m hearing now, or am I simply going mad?

I began to feel the air rushing over my out stretched wings and on instinct I angled my wings to reduce drag for Fruity as he carried me along. We were so close to the tower now but the darkness from the setting sun was a bad sign.

“Ah cock and bollocks!” Fruity shouted as the whole city seemed to shriek in unison and like someone opened the gates of Tartarus, streams of dark shapes began to fly up into the now night sky from all around us.

“Oh Celestia no,” I squeaked. “Bloodwings,”

Fruity pumped his wings harder and we rose higher and higher until we flew over and just above the high rise and put ourselves in a straight run to the tower. Tenpony Tower was like a shining beacon in the darkness as its floodlights lit up the surrounding area to keep away the mutant bats.

“CLOSE YOUR EYES!” We heard a guard shout through a megaphone from the platform and we saw movement. A pony had moved towards a switch on the back wall of the station platform. As soon as the guard flipped the switch, two extremely bright spot lights flicked on, their intense beams of light illuminating the high rise railway for a good few hundred feet and the lights were bright enough that any nearby Bloodwings shrieked in pain and flew away.

Fruity slowed to a hover and let me go. I landed softly on my three good hooves and sighed with relief that we were back in safe territory. Fruity landed beside me, panting tiredly. I smiled and hugged him.

“Thank you, you did wonderfully,” I cooed softly to him.

He just smiled in reply while taking in large lungful’s of air.

“You made it back, that’s good, DJ PON-3 is eager to hear about what you found out there,” The guard on duty stated.

“Thank you, um, where’s Slick?” Fruity asked when he got his breath back.

“He’s off duty; he works the day shift,”

We nodded our thanks and quickly hobbled into the tower. Fruity was courteous enough to open the doors for me while I limped on through. I was glad it was early evening because that meant there wasn’t as many ponies wandering the tower as before but there was still enough to stare at me as we made our way to the central elevators. I could feel their gazes on me while we waited for the lift to arrive. I knew discarding the bandages was a bad idea, but the itchiness would have driven me mad by now. I just hope they haven’t seen the metal under my skin. The wait for the lift felt like it took hours and I couldn’t get into it fast enough to get out of sight when it arrived, but sadly we had to wait again for the long ride up to the penthouse.

The ride to the top was frustrating but thankfully, I had Fruity to cuddle on the way up, if not for him the cramped space would likely have made me want to tear the doors off so I could get out. As the doors opened when we finally reached the top we found Silver Disc and another aged unicorn stallion sitting in the hallway waiting for us. I didn’t see Xian with them and immediately worry crept into my mind as we stepped out. The DJ opened his mouth to greet us but I cut him off first.

“Where’s Xian?” I asked quickly with worry.

He blinked for a moment but then gave a light smile as he replied. “Don’t worry, she’s ok, she’s just asleep, poor girl tired herself out worrying over you two and I suppose she had good reason. I believe that big explosion not long ago was your doing considering it was in the direction of Checkpoint Glimmer?”

“Not on purpose I swear,” Fruity quickly clarified.

Silver Disc nodded as he turned around and begun to walk back towards his home and we followed behind him along with the other unicorn. I wonder who he is but I suppose introductions will come when we are inside. Once back inside, he led us to a dining table and gestured for us to take a seat on the comfy looking dining room chairs.

“Ok, before we begin with your findings, let me introduce my old friend Quartermane, he was a seasoned explorer in his youth,” The DJ introduced the other dark grey unicorn with a charcoal mane and tail that look pretty wild with a pat on the shoulder. Quartermane kept quiet for the moment but he nodded his head in acknowledgement and to let Silver continue. “So, what did you find out?”

Taking a breath we explained everything we discovered, from the crane that was pulled down, the boarded up shops on Saddle Row, the booby-trapped shop and alleyway which had all been in an effort to herd the salvage team into a killzone, and then the discovery of the salvage team and how they were killed without anypony at the checkpoint hearing it. We also told him of our speculation of Raiders using the underground networks of sewers and metro tunnels to get in and around the safe zone undetected.

“Hmm, our checkpoints won’t be able to cover anywhere near as much ground if this also means having to check every ponyhole cover in the area. Tenpony Tower’s surveillance system can only do so much and all the buildings around it can easily block most of the street level areas of view,” Silver looked off to the side for a moment in thought before he sighed. “Thank you, I will send this information down to our heads of security and hopefully they’ll be able to come up with something else,”

“You’re welcome,” I said with a soft smile. I winced a little as my smile must have made one of my wounds more noticeable or something as Quartermane’s eyes looked right at me.

“Now then, you two wanted to know where Paradigm Cybernetics is correct?” Silver asked as he got up from his seat and walked over to a nearby cupboard and opened it.

“That’s right,” I nodded.

“Sadly, I myself couldn’t find it but luckily I knew somepony that had been places,” Silver said as he pulled out a roll of paper from the cupboard and then rolled it out onto the table. The roll of paper turned out to be a map of Manehattan with multiple coloured rings drawn on it around a certain point, with each ring moving away from the centre ring a different colour from the next.

“Quartermane here has been to Paradigm Cybernetics before and he’s agreed to show you where it is,”

“Wow really, oh thank you so much,” I said with genuine happiness in my voice.

“I don’t know why you young’uns even want to go out to a place like that, it’s nothing but trouble but mister Silver told me it was important to you so here it is,” The dark coloured stallion pointed out while tapping his hoof onto the map, inside the top must dotted ring on the other side of Manehattan from where we are currently sitting right now.

“Oh that’s not good,” Fruity sighed.

“Huh, why what’s wrong?” I asked confused by his reaction.

“Ah, I’m afraid Crystal, where you want to go is inside the Blast Zone, it may be inside the area of least effect but it is still inside the danger zone,” The Silver pointed out.

“Wait, are you telling me, where we need to go, is inside where the Balefire Bomb hit?”

Everypony around me nodded and I felt my heart drop like a lead weight into my stomach.

“What are we going to do now?” I whined as I looked up and out the window in the direction of the now very clear green glow on the horizon behind all the jagged and broken buildings where we know the bomb had to have hit.

“Well, if you still want to go, I might be able to point you to a pony that may have some hazmat suits you could buy,” Silver smiled.

“That would be great, thank you,” I said gratefully. “I still want to know who did this to me and why,”

“It’s my pleasure, and thank you Quartermane for your assistance tonight,” Silver Disc raised his eyebrow with intrigue after my last statement.

“Anytime, old friend,” The dark stallion said with a small smile as he left the table and then the room.

Silver waited for a good few seconds to be sure his friend was gone before the confident voice of the DJ returned. “Again I would like to sincerely thank you for finding the salvage team and finding out what happened to them. I’ll be able to let their families know the truth now.”

Fruity and I gave our thanks again as we leaned against each other.

“Anyway Miss Heroine of the West, would you allow me to interview you now?” He asked.

“Why did you give me that title and how do you even know I did anything worth it?” I demanded.

Silver smiled as he gestured to the room in the middle of his penthouse suite. “This tower is in fact the Ministry of Arcane Science Hub and in that room there is the MASEB System, it’s basically the Ministry of Arcane Science Emergency Broadcast System and it allows me to use the Single Pegasus Project as surveillance tools. It was through them that I was able to know about your exploits out west, even when the towers out there were either destroyed or not working entirely I still had some reliable contacts that were able to contact me through the nearest tower that could broadcast back,” He explained.

“Oh, I see, wow, so that’s how you get to see what goes on in the wasteland and offer the ponies the helpful snippets of news you do?” I asked.

He nodded with a proud smile of the things he’s done using his studio.

“Ok then, well what would you like to know about me now that I’m here?”

He smiled as he stood up. “Everything, it will help me tell the right story to the ponies of the wasteland,”

I looked at Fruity and then rubbed at my cheek softly with my hoof. “I don’t want to keep lying anymore, it nearly cost me my relationship, the best thing to do is to tell the truth,” I sighed before giving Fruity a light kiss on the forehead. His eyes were saying, “Are you sure about this?” To me and I nodded to him as I got up and joined the DJ who had moved over to the door for the MASEB room.

“Come and join us Fruity, this is as much as your story as it is hers,” DJ-PON3 said when he noticed that Fruity hadn’t moved.

“It’s ok, I was with her nearly every single step of the way, besides, somepony needs to check on Xian, can’t leave her all by herself if she wakes up while you’re in there,” He said.

I smiled at that.

“Very well, she’s up the stairs there and using my bed,” Silver pointed to some stairs next to wall beside the central room.

“Ok, see you in a bit,” Fruity said as he fluttered up to check on Xian and I entered the studio room.

“Now then, in your own time, tell me about yourself,” DJ-PON3 asked as he fired up his recording equipment.

Biting down my nervousness I began my story from the beginning, from before I became this.

XXXXX

Earlier.

“Hehe stupid fucking cunts can’t hit the broad side of a barn,” A pony wearing long johns and having an assortment of cobbled together pieces of metal and leather on his limbs laughed as he ran out of one hotel room and moved down the dirty and ruined corridor to the next.

“This is so much fun, can’t believe that zebra bitch made herself such an easy target,” He smiled with glee as his horn glowed with red magic and he levitated his custom made weapon. The weapon though was a common type among raiders, a block of wood with a metal pipe through the middle with a breach and then all the usual pieces necessary to make it a proper firearm like a stock, magazine, barrel and in the case of this one, a scope.

The Raider peered down his scope at the train station to Tenpony Tower, the place he has been terrorising for the last few minutes after shooting down the zebrasus thing and he could see that the sniper guard down there was getting very frustrated.

“Hehe stupid bitch, I’m right here, can’t you hit me?” He taunted despite knowing they wouldn’t be able to hear him from so far away. “Oh what’s this?” He asked when he saw the sniper guard storm off back into the tower but returned shortly after with what he could only describe as a “Big fuck off canon” and aimed it up at the window he was looking out of.

“Oh shit, ok, time to go,” He yelled with worry as he quickly turned and ran out of the room. Seconds after leaving the room, it exploded and was engulfed in fire from the shell impact from the large sniper weapon from the guard.

“WHAT FUCK IS THAT THING ARMED WITH?!” He screamed as he ran down the corridor, heading for the stairs.

Mere feet from the stairs and safety, the door was suddenly kicked open causing the Raider to skid to a halt. A large armoured stallion stood in the open doorway, his body was clad in black riot combat armour with the shoulders showing fire damage but the top half of his body was shrouded in dark shadow preventing the raider from seeing his face but he however could see two glowing red eyes staring back at him.

“What the fuck, who are you?!”

The shrouded stallion didn’t respond. The Raider’s ears swivelled at the whistle of an incoming shell. His eyes widened when there was the sound of a glass pane breaking and a bullet impacting the wall just behind him. He had a split second to see the stallion’s face as the fire of the explosive bullet lit up the hallway, as his body was being consumed by the explosion. He saw the robotic skeletal skull like head with those emotionless eyes staring back at him before he died. The explosive shell left nothing but a smear on the wall as well a fresh hole and more cracks in the wall and floor from the point of impact.

“I may no longer wish to follow my primary objective but I still feel obliged to follow the secondary objective in protecting her,” Nexus said to himself quietly as he began to walk back down the stairs.


(Added 22/09/2016 Forgot to add this when I uploaded)

Additional Author Notes:

The weapon 'Mr Fuck You' is based on the weapon mod for Fallout 4 Modular Simonov PTRS-41 Anti-Tank Rifle

Starlight Tower and Starlight Industries are parodies of Stark Industries and Stark Tower.

(Added 17/10/16)

Illustration of Crystal's jump scare.

Source: http://vector-brony.deviantart.com/art/Scared-Crystal-Eclaire-640669533

Chapter 13: To the Edge

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Fallout Equestria: Influx

Chapter 13: To the Edge

“Well hello everybody of the Equestrian Wasteland! It’s me your friendly neighbourhood disc-jockey… what’s a disc, hell if I know? But I’m gonna keep talking anyway.

Now, you may have all heard me ramble on about the do-good zebra mare from out west. Well guess who came and paid ol’DJ-PON3 a visit? That’s right, the Heroine of the West!

Our hero from out west, Crystal is her name, has done some wonderful feats of valour in her quest for truth with her loyal Dashite companion. Yes, that’s right; our poor hero is just another victim of the wasteland like most of us just trying to make it day to day. Despite her best efforts in trying to uncover the truth behind what ails her, she has leant a hoof to several communities. Her heroic feats include saving a filly from a burning train, taking out a foal killer, rescuing a zebra filly, and her biggest achievement so far has been saving the Marejave from the dangers of Stable 106.

Despite everything she’s done on her journey, our zebra heroine is still nowhere near in finding the answers she seeks, if you see a black stetson-wearing zebra mare with wings traveling with a purple pegasus, give them a hoof or better yet, some ammo.

This has been DJ-PON3 bringing you’re a special report on the Heroine of the West, and now, Sapphire Shores with “Setting the World on Balefire”.”

I smiled to myself as I lay on our tower room bed with little Xian curled up and fast asleep against my stomach. It was early evening and we had moved back down to the room we had used last time we were here. DJ-PON3 had just broadcasted his report on me over the radio that sat on the nightstand beside our bed. I’m glad he left out my mechanical side; after all it was him that suggested not to include it. He had told me of a few groups that might take particular interest in me for being mostly machine, either viewing me as some pre-war tech or another robot to capture and repurpose for their own gains.

Xian let out a little moan in her sleep as she wiggled a little to get more comfortable against my belly. I couldn’t help a maternal smile spread across my lips while I watched her, and felt the urge to drape my fluffy wing over her to blanket her in the warm feathers. However, my happy moment was spoiled as I remembered what Fruity and I had yet to do. Sure we could leave Xian in the safety of Silver Disc, but it is leaving her behind that hurts. She doesn’t want to be alone again and she’s grown attached to me and honestly so have I. I don’t feel comfortable leaving her on her own either, but I’d rather do that when I know she’ll be safe rather than bring her along to which she could possibly get hurt or worse, plus there is no way in Tartarus I am taking her into the Impact Crater.

“Yeah, and up yours buddy,” Fruity yelled as he opened our door and backed in. “Fucking stuck up unicorn prick,” He grumbled to himself as he closed the door.

“Fruity, hush, she’s sleeping,” I hissed as he turned around.

“Oh, sorry,” He wilted slightly. The purple pegasus placed a plastic bag onto my bed and pulled out a paper package that smelt of salt and vinegar. “Got us some chippy on the way back,” He said while he took a package of his own to his bed opposite mine.

“Thank you,” I smiled as I gently unwrapped the paper to reveal a small mountain of steaming deep fried chips. “This is a big portion,” I commented on the sheer amount.

“I got you a large one just in case Xian was hungry,” He clarified as he took into his own chips.

“Good to see they can still get potatoes to make these,” I commented as I slowly ate.

“Hmm oh yea, it would be a very bleak world without this delicacy.”

I chuckled softly. “Hehe, anyway, did that vendor Silver Disc pointed you to have any Hazmat Suits?” I asked, getting to the subject on where Fruity had been the past hour.

Fruity sighed. “No, err, well he did, just one and it wouldn’t have suited neither of us either.”

“What do you mean?”

“The suit he had in stock was meant for a unicorn or earth pony, but because of our wings the suit wouldn’t have been appropriate for us to wear,” He explained.

“Oh, well, now how are we supposed to get to Paradigm Cybernetics?” I asked with disappointment clear in my voice.

“He did however point me in the direction of a possible location to find pegasi hazmat suits that may still have some there, and it is right over there,” Fruity said while pointing a hoof to the window with a chip on the end like a pointer. I followed the direction he was pointing and gasped when I saw the tall glass and steel tower of Starlight Industries in the distance still glowering at the top thanks to its neon name sign.

“Starlight Tower?”

“Eeyup,” He nodded.

I blinked while I stared out at the tower, thinking to myself on what to do. We need hazmat suits to handle the radiation from the Impact Crater and I doubt my endoskeleton will shield my internal organs from the rads, especially from such an environment. If all goes well from going to the tower, we can go straight to the crater from there, or perhaps use the tower as a vantage point to help plan a route. Overall, I guess we’ll be going to Starlight Industries in the morning.

XXXXX

We were awoken early in the morning by an almighty boom which was followed by a high-pitched scream.

“Who the fuck is setting off explosives at this hour?” Fruity whined groggily as he sat up in bed.

I however had a shivering and frightened filly tightly hugging against my chest. She was whimpering and crying like something had scared her.

“Hey, what’s the matter?” I asked softly.

The sky is angry,” She squeaked in zebrican.

“*yawn* what did she say?” Fruity asked as he rubbed at an eye with a wing tip.

I tilted my head while trying to understand what she meant and turned to look out the window and my entire thought process got derailed. I had thought she meant that another storm had rolled in at first but what I saw out the window made me think I was still dreaming because it looked nightmarish.

“F-Fruity, w-what is that?” I asked fearfully while pointing out the window which was being battered by rain.

The sky outside was a sickly yellowy green which made everything outside look so sick and poisonous. Every now and then, if not obscured by the buildings, we would see yellow lightning bolts ark to the ground and that was generally followed by a clap of thunder that sounded off. I can’t describe how it sounded but the sound was creepy.

“Knackers, that’s a Radstorm,” Fruity sighed.

I blinked in confusion and then turned my attention to Fruity while gently stroking Xian with a hoof to try and calm her down. “A what?” I asked for clarification.

“A Radstorm, you know,” He said while I just stared blankly at him. “Oh right, err forgot. Um, let’s see,” He paused and tapped at his chin for a moment as he thought. “A Radiation Storm or Radstorm for short, is a weather system that occurs in areas with high traces of magical radiation that accumulates in the air. It generally results in what you see out there, but each lightning strike will cause a radiation spike. Thankfully though these storms don’t tend to last too long, otherwise we’d all be knackered,”

“This new world I find myself in just keeps getting better and better,” I groaned sarcastically.

“Ha, yea it’s fantastic isn’t it,” Fruity laughed but his sarcastic laugh was drowned out by another loud bomb of thunder that made Xian whimper fearfully. “I actually nearly died the first time I encountered a Radstorm after I got booted out of the clouds. I didn’t have a PipBuck or any radiation detecting doings so by the time I made it to a settlement I was suffering from major radiation sickness.”

“You were lucky,” I remarked while I was looking out the window, watching the rain and yellow lightning.

“Heh, yea, I was but I was called a “Dumbass” and lost three hundred caps for the treatment to cure my rads,” Fruity said with a roll of his eyes.

For about an hour and a half we stayed in our room waiting out the storm. I mostly spent the time comforting Xian, who was scared so much by the storm she wouldn’t move her head from my chest despite how damp my fur was getting with her tears. There was also a lot of activity outside our door too as we could hear shouting and a lot of hoof falls. Fruity went out to see what was going on and he was quickly ushered back in by a guard that told him to remain in our room until the storm had passed for our own safety. I guess these Radstorms were really that bad.

Eventually the skies outside faded back to the usual dull grey clouds that seem to constantly blanket Equestria these days as the storm dissipated. The activity from outside our door also sounded like everything was winding back down to normal as well.

“That was the most terrifying storm I’ve ever bore witness to,” I commented as I stroked Xian’s head with a wing. Thankfully she had calmed down some since the storm had passed.

“Yeah, they can get pretty intense,” Fruity agreed.

“Should we expect another one anytime soon?” I asked while looking intently at Starlight Tower in the distance.

“I dunno, it can be pretty random for one to appear, we could go days to even weeks without one to getting several in one day,” Fruity explained with a sigh. “It’s being so close to the Impact Crater that makes the storms here so unpredictable.”

“Ugh, well we can’t just stay in here forever.”

“I agree, those tower residents might tolerate you more after you got the DJ’s seal of approval but you are still basically a zebra and many still hate them,” Fruity said with a sad sigh at the end.

“Xian, Xian honey,” I said softly with a gentle nuzzle to get her attention so she would look up at me. It pained me for what I was about to do when I looked down into her big green innocent eyes. I know she felt pretty lonely after being abandoned but I can’t take her with me on this quest. It is for her own safety. “I know you don’t like me leaving you on your own sweetie, but I have something very important to do and where I need to go is too dangerous for a filly like you. I don’t want to take you with me because I could never forgive myself if something was to happen to you out there. I would be happier in knowing you were here, safe and sound,” I explained softly to her but I felt my heart break at the sight of her tears as they welled up in the corners of her eyes.

“Y-you’ll come back for m-me right?” She asked quietly.

I pulled the saddened filly into a gentle embrace and closed my wings around her. “Oh of course I will. I came back before. I promise I’ll come back for you this time too.”

“Don’t worry Xi, we won’t leave you for long and we’ll be back before you know it,” Fruity agreed as he stood by our bed and gently rested his forehoof on her withers reassuringly.

The poor filly nodded but still looked sad as Fruity and I began to prepare for our excursion to Starlight Tower. I put the Noir Coat on first (the one that I recovered from the shop before it exploded) after making a slight adjustment so my wings could slip through the back, then I slipped my sock covered hind legs into the pair of hind leg boots that came with the assemble. Despite having been in a display case for the good part of two centuries the clothing items felt ok on my fur. Once the clothing items were on, I put on my armour pieces on top of the coat, with the chest piece first followed by the shoulder guards, then the knee guards on my hind legs and my worn black stetson atop my head to complete my outfit.

“Looking good,” Fruity smiled at me after he was all dressed up in his worn duster and brown steston hat.

I blushed slightly at the compliment. “Aww thank you handsome,” I replied with a nuzzle to his cheek.

After a quick adjustment, so that my coat’s tails rested over my flanks, I crouched next to the bed to let Xian climb onto my back. “Mr Silver Disc agreed to watch you again while we are away, you’ll be in good hooves until we get back,” I assured her as the timid filly crawled onto my back and sat on my shoulders in front of my medical box.

“Ready?” Fruity asked as we approached the door to leave.

Xian hugged against the back of my neck and whimpered but nodded. He nodded and opened the door and held it open while we left the room and then quickly trotted to my side so we could walk side by side while we headed for the lifts.

Xian wiggled her hips to get more comfortable on my back. Her tail swished and knocked against my lever-action shotgun that sat across the top of the medical box and made it shift a little, which I felt and it reminded me of something.

“Oh Fruity.” The purple pegasus turned to look at me after we stopped at the lifts and he pressed the button to call it. “We should stop by one of the vendors before we leave for some supplies; I need some shells for my shotgun.”

“Shit, I knew I forgot something when I was looking for that hazmat suit guy,” He sighed.

“Language in front of Xian,” I hissed quietly. “She can understand you pretty well now remember.”

“Cock, sorry.”

I shook my head just as the lift pinged its arrival and the doors opened and a small group of ponies stepped out. Fruity and I quickly parted to give the exiting ponies some room to leave the lift but as they passed us I swear I heard one of them say, “Zebra trash,” under their breath.

I sighed. Fruity was right about some hating me. I stepped into the lift which groaned at my weight before I concentrated on my levitation talismans to reduce my weight enough to seem normal. There were a couple other ponies still in here along with a guard but they seemed to be keeping to themselves and not attempted to make eye contact with me or Fruity, although a couple of them seemed to be nervous with me inside with them.

“Where to?” The guard asked unexpectedly which made me jump.

“Oh, err, the Main Plaza please,” I squeaked.

He nodded and pushed the button to close the doors and with a shudder, the lift began to descend to the Plaza. The ride down to the Main Plaza was rather tense as we could feel the nervous tension between the other ponies in the lift that kept as far away from me as possible and wouldn’t dare look at me. As soon as those doors opened we were quick to get out of there and that awful atmosphere. Are zebras really that hated, even now after two hundred years since the war ended?

We quickly made our way through the top floor of the Plaza to the central column where the central lifts were. Then to the express lift that would take us to the penthouse where we would find Silver Disc. After a quick ride up to the top of Tenpony Tower, we smiled as we found Silver Disc waiting for us outside the door.

“Ah, good morning Crystal and Fruity and Xian,” He greeted with a warm smile.

“Morning,” I said with a wave of a wing.

Fruity gave a respectful nod of his head in greeting.

“Thank you for agreeing to look after Xian again while we follow up on our lead to Paradigm Cybernetics,” I said while lowering myself down to my stomach to let Xian hop off my back which she did rather reluctantly.

“It’s no trouble. She was so well behaved last time and it is the least I can do for you,” He said with a friendly smile as Xian slowly walked over to him. “And I agree with you in not taking her with you to the Impact Crater. You can’t protect her from what’s in there.”

I nodded. “Now you be a good filly for Mr Silver now ok, we’ll be back soon, I promise.”

“Don’t worry kidda, we’ll be back before you know it,” Fruity said with a flap of his wings.

The filly nodded and whimpered as she stood beside Silver, looking up on us with teary eyes. She looked so sad then. It was painful to look at.

“Oh, before I forget. Quartermane has volunteered to help guide you to Paradigm Cybernetics,” Silver suddenly piped up. “He stopped by early this morning to tell me he was going to help you and that he would meet you all at the crater’s edge.” The old unicorn levitated a rolled-up map to us. “He left this map for you to guide you to his little hideout.” I took the map with my nano-fibre tail and deposited it into one of my coat’s pockets. “Good luck out there you two.”

“Thank you so much,” Fruity and I said together, although Fruity only said the “Thank you” part.

We headed back down to the Plaza and trotted down the nearby stairs from the lift to the lower level, where the shops, bars and eateries were as we searched for a vendor that sold weapons and ammunition. Our search didn’t take too long as an old promotional cut out of a Steel Ranger standing outside of a shop was a clear indicator to what the shop sold, especially with a sign on it saying, “20% Off ammunition when bought with a Gun!”.

The door chimed with a charming little bell when we pushed open the door and entered the gun store. The inside looked like an old newsagents but its shelves now held old guns and ammo boxes of various types instead of newspapers. I groaned as my electronic brain gave me a history lesson I didn’t need on the guns that my eyes fell upon as we took in the store.

“Welcome to Hurt Locker, how may I help you?” A dull green Earth Pony with a white mane and tail said as he stepped out from behind his counter to greet us.

“Hi, um, I’m looking for 20-gauge shells and .357 Magnum rounds,” I said, listing off what ammo types I required for my guns.

“Ah, you’re in luck. I just got a fresh shipment of 20-gauge from the last salvage team that went out for me, but I’m afraid I don’t have any .357. That type of ammunition is rare to come by out here,”

“Oh, dang. Well I guess we’ll buy some 20-gauge shells,” I said with some disappointment that I wouldn’t be able to get any bullets for Lucky 13. “How many shells do you have in stock?”

“Hmm let’s see,” The Earth Pony walked over to a shelf that had a selection of shotguns and to an ammo box marked for 20-gauge and opened the lid. He muttered to himself for a moment before he pulled his head back. “I have exactly one hundred shells. I charge two caps per shell,”

“We have two hundred caps right Fruity?” I asked my companion.

He nodded as he reached into a pocket on his duster with a wing and pulled out one of our pouches of caps. “Yeah, we are still pretty loaded after that mercenary work we did,” He said.

I smiled. “Great, I’ll take all your 20-gauge shells,”

“Excellent,” He exclaimed clapping his forehooves together happily and then snatched the pouch of caps faster than any of us could blink and then dumped the ammo box at our hooves. “Pleasure doing business with you miss Stripe.”

“That’s Miss Eclair thank you very much,” I huffed in annoyed at the racial term being thrown my way again. I grabbed the ammo box with my tail and stormed out the store in a huff.

“Not cool mate, not cool,” Fruity sighed before he followed me out.

Outside the store and I filled my new coat’s pockets with the shells for my lever-action, I grumbled to myself in annoyance. “I may have not been born a Zebra but this constant racial discrimination against me for looking like one is starting to get to me,” I sighed.

Fruity gently wrapped a wing over my shoulders. “I know how you feel, us pegasi get a lot of stick too because of the Enclave but don’t let it get you down. We are better than them.”

I nuzzled his cheek. “Thank you for that, now come on, let’s hurry, I don’t want to keep Xian waiting too long.”

Fruity nodded as we headed for the station to leave the tower and then to our destination over at Starlight Tower.

XXXXX

We left the tower and made our way down to the streets below, beginning our trek to Starlight Tower. Along the way, we discovered that the fresh puddles from the radstorm were highly radioactive because when I stepped into one it made my PipBuck scream like a harpy. I wonder how resistant I am to radiation because of my endoskeleton if at all; I think I should see one of those doctor ponies back in Tenpony later to see if they can tell me.

We followed the route we took the previous day back to the tower, that included going through what remained of Rarity For You and back up Saddle Row until we were back at Check Point Glimmer in the courtyard to the tech giant’s head office building.

“Oh it’s you two again,” Bourbon said as she came out from around a destroyed statue base with a rifle being carried in her yellow magic. “Is there something else we can help you with?” The dark coloured unicorn asked as she approached us.

“Oh not really, we were just heading for Starlight Tower,” Fruity said as he stared up at the towering mass of glass and steel.

“We are looking for something that might hopefully be available inside,” I added while looking at her.

“Ah, well I’m sorry to say this but for whatever reason all access to the upper floors from the ground have all been collapsed and all elevators have also been disabled. There is no way up into the tower from the ground floor. You can be ballsy and try to jump from a nearby building and through a window or you can fly on up to that landing platform all the way up there,” Bourbon said cocking her head up to the tower while pointing her gun upwards toward the landing pad.

“Knackers,” Fruity sighed as he looked up at the landing pad hundreds of feet into the air.

“Most of the tower’s windows look intact around the lower half,” I commented while I scanned the building’s exterior.

“Bollocks,” Fruity sighed. “I think our best bet would be to fly for the landing platform as fast as possible.”

I nodded in agreement while giving my wings an experimental flap.

Fruity looked at my large wings with concern. “Have your wings and leg repaired themselves ok?” He asked.

“Thankfully they are ok. I ate some metallic objects before bed last night and I suppose it helped me repair myself while I slept,” I said with a tilt of the head. I still did not fully understand how any of that worked but I hope I’ll get my answers soon.

“I’ll leave you two to it then. Good luck,” Chocolate Bourbon said as she turned away and continued on her rounds.

“Thank you, bye,” I waved with a wing to which she just nodded as she walked on.

“Ok, that’s good,” Fruity began as he took another look at the tower. “Right ok, this tower is really tall. Hmm… I’d estimate about um, seven hundred, maybe even eight hundred feet tall. There aren’t any other buildings around that height close by so we’ll be in the open here. We’ll have to fly fast and hug the wall as close as possible to avoid being seen as much as we can until we reach the landing pad. From there I guess we’ll work it out as we go along.”

“That was nicely thought out,” He beamed at the praise but I gave a mischievous grin. “Apart from the end when you lost it.” He deflated at that but I giggled and nuzzled him which helped to perk him back up.

“Ok, you ready?” He asked as he spread his purple wings wide ready for take-off.

I nodded as I mimicked him by opening my own white and grey feathered wings ready to fly. I could feel a strong sense of energy flow through me as my mana-core activated to power the levitation talismans in my wings.

“Ok, in three, two, one!” He counted down and on one we both shot up into the air with great powerful flaps of our wings.

XXXXX

“Have you finished sorting out the different mana-core frequencies yet?” Unit 2 asked with a bored tone as he sat on the pavement outside a long time since out of business café.

“I don’t see you trying to do anything, you lazy shit,” Unit 1 fired back while she stood a few feet away with her head held high while she tried to narrow down the multiple power signatures to those similar to theirs.

“I’m not as skilled as you,” He said with a sigh.

This made the feminine robot lower her head and look at him and then spoke in a deadpan voice. “We are robots, we are not any better than each other.”

“Really Razzle, you seem better than me in everything,” He grumbled.

“Get a hold of yourself Unit 2, don’t let the mind you took confuse you,” She said with concern for her companion, fearing the mind was having an unanticipated effect on his neural processor.

Unit 2 shook his head to reign in his thoughts. “Sorry, it’s getting harder to supress these feelings.”

Unit 1 disguised as Corporal Razzle stepped over to her brother and placed a comforting hoof onto his shoulder armour. “You are not alone. I’m here to help you after all, like a sister should despite what the Commander thinks,” She said, failing to notice her own slip.

“Thanks sis.”

“Yo…” Razzle was cut off as she was alerted to an energy spike that matched the mana-core frequency identical to her own. She whirled around and looked down the street and then up at a tower in the distance with a pink neon sign that said “Glimmer”.

Buckshot stood up in alert as he too had felt the surge. “What is it?” He asked as he readied his battlesaddle.

If Unit 1 could smile she would have given him a smirk. “I’ve found the Mark 1,” She said as she then nodded her head in the direction of the tower. “It would seem her mana-core only uses its full potential when she’s flying, she’s flying fast up the side of that building over there,” She indicated the tower as she spoke.

“Well then, shall we pay them a visit?”

“But of course,” Razzle said as she and her brother began for the tower.

XXXXX

I knew from my past life before all this that pegasi could fly fast but I never knew just how fast. We had been able to cover the distance between the ground and the landing pad within a minute, which astonished me. Furthermore, I felt that niggling feeling of wanting to race Fruity as I followed behind him all the way up. I had to restrain myself from trying to overtake him despite the little voice in the back of my head screaming at me to push myself harder, to beat him and gloat. Another thing I noticed was that I produced a teal green and golden orange contrail behind me as we sped up the side of the building; I noticed it in the reflections of the windows that were still intact. I only know of a hoofful of pegasus ponies that were fast enough to do that and one of them was the ministry mare Rainbow Dash. Does this mean I have the magic of some top flyer in me? Just what did that upgrade station do to me?

“Phew, we made it,” Fruity smiled in relief as he panted heavily for breath.

“Yeah, thankfully,” I agreed, thankful that the flight was uneventful. “Are you ok?”

“Phew yeah, just haven’t flown that fast in a while. I’ll be alright,” He wheezed.

The view from up here was amazing; we could see all of western and southern Manehattan. It was incredible to see just how much of the city still lived from up here. We could see in several areas where lights still blazed in the dark of the constant cloud cover. The lights were a beacon to areas where ponies still lived in the city. I smiled, happy to know ponies were still clinging to life in other areas in Manehattan than just in Tenpony.

The landing platform was rather large, big enough for several chariots or one of those new Vertibucks they had made in the later years of the war. There was however an unusual sight on the landing pad that greeted us when we landed. Sitting almost dead centre on the landing pad was a jet black chariot that bore the insignia of the Ministry of Image, a stylish I on top of a crescent moon with three diamonds to the left side of the I and moon.

“I didn’t know Rarity looked into the technology side of things,” I said after noticing the chariot.

“I don’t think it’s actually hers. I mean this thing is clean and still has its wheels, but it doesn’t look like it’s been here that long either,” Fruity observed cautiously.

“Then there could be somepony here?” I asked as I looked over to the building ahead of us.

“Probably. I think we need to be cautious, you know, just in case.”

I nodded in agreement and gave the chariot a wide berth (just in case). A bridge connected from the platform and to the building with a pair of wide glass doors that laid wide open as if inviting us in. A sign on the wall read “Sky Reception” with an arrow pointing ahead. It is not surprising that this building would have two receptions, one for the ground and one for top where ponies would come and go from the landing pad would arrive and go from.

We stood in the rather spacious reception room amidst what had probably been the remains of the chaos that had befallen the tower when the evacuation broadcast sounded. The waiting chairs were all over the place, some of the coffee tables were displaced or flipped over, papers and old magazines littered the floor, a lot of the ceiling tiles had fallen through with wires and cables dangling down in places, and plenty of other debris littered the corners.

“They really need to fire their cleaning staff,” Fruity joked.

“I think Starlight actually had those Ms Nanny robots to do all that,” I said while looking around for a possible direction to go. One hallway was caved in to the left of us which left us with the back corridor that led us deeper into the tower.

“Where the bloody hell are we even going?” Fruity asked as we followed the corridor.

“I dunno, I’m as clueless as you,” I quipped. “Where would they have Hazmat Suits, in a place like this?”

“Err, um, let’s see,” Fruity rubbed at his goatee with a wingtip as he thought. “Hmm, probably close to a lab, we’ll need to…” He was cut off just as we turned a corner and found ourselves in a hallway with some elevators but just as one of the lifts thrummed to life.

“Err, somepony is coming,” I whimpered.

“Knackers, hide,” Fruity urged and we swiftly hid ourselves behind the opposite corner shrouded in shadow but with a hole in the wall behind us that let some light in that cast a shadow into the hallway.

Fruity rolled the Q-Modulator off his back and primed it ready to fire just as we could hear the sound of the lift getting closer and closer. Fearing we may have a fight on our hooves when those doors opened, I opted to follow Fruity’s example and used my nano-fibre tail to get my now fully loaded lever-action shotgun off my back and cocked ready to fire. After another agonising minute of waiting the lift finally dinged to signal it had reached its floor and the door slid open.

“Stay calm and still Crystal,” Fruity whispered despite his own light shaking of anticipation.

“Clear!” A somewhat familiar voice called out that was followed by heavy metallic hoofsteps.

“Come now Wirbelwind, it is not necessary for you to defend me like the soldier you used to be,” Chided another familiar voice. “We are friends after all.”

“Ugh, I’m sorry Scrap, old habits die hard,” The voice we now know as Wirbelwind replied. I’m sure I’ve heard that name before.

“It’s ok, after how long you served in the Enclave I can’t expect you to just drop everything just like that, but I would prefer you not to treat me like one of your old commanders when we are alone and away from the work force,” The other voice said.

“I’ll try, it’s just that you command such a presence with your image I find it hard to not fall back on my old training.”

“They drilled the “Respect the chain of command” into you pretty hard didn’t they?”

“They were very strict yes,” Wirbelwind sighed. “Wait a minute, we are not alone here. Who’s there? Identify yourself!” He barked along with two chimes which we assumed were energy weapons charging up.

“Crap. Fruity, we’re adding a shadow and our little movements can be seen,” I whispered.

“Bollocks to buggery,” He sighed.

“Come out nice and slow,” Wirbelwind commanded.

“I would do as he says please,” The other voice said calmly but with authority and his voice was followed by a loud click and clank before a motor revved.

“Ok, ok, we’re coming out, please don’t shoot,” I shouted back fearfully.

We slung our weapons and slowly stepped out into the corridor and immediately our eyes widened in surprise as we didn’t expect to see the giant earth pony that was standing behind a power armoured pegasus again.

“Motor Runner,” I greeted with a sigh of relief which Fruity shared despite being nervous and tense in the presence of the Enclave armoured pegasus.

The giant earth pony blinked in surprise at us knowing his name. “Do I know you?” He asked as he gazed at us, we could see it in his eyes as he tried to remember. I suppose he wouldn’t recognise me right now since I didn’t have a pair of wings the last time we met and I’m wearing a different outfit. “Wait, you’re that zebra and pegasus that took care of Tango Jack for me, aren’t you?”

I smiled and nodded.

He smiled and relaxed his stance, his chainsaw foreleg withdrawing and returning to its normal state. “You can stand down Wirbelwind, these two ponies are on good terms with me.”

The armoured pegasus hesitated for a moment before disarming his armour’s built-in plasma weapons. “Yes sir.”

“It is good to see you again Ms Éclair, you as well Mr Fruity,” Motor Runner said softly as he fully stepped out of the lift and in a few strides of his long legs stood in front of us. “I hope you are getting by ok in the wasteland.”

“As well as we can be,” Fruity said with a grimace when he looked over to me, specifically my wings.

“You did not have wings the last time we met or were they hidden under your duster?” Motor Runner asked with his attention on my wings.

“I had an accident that gave me them,” I answered vaguely with a frown. “I really don’t want to talk about it.”

“Hmm fair enough,” The large well-groomed stallion must have sensed that it was a sore subject as he backed off and changed the subject. “What brings you to Starlight Tower?”

“Oh, we are looking for some pegasi hazmat suits,” Fruity replied.

“Ah, I believe there are some in a storage room near one of the labs on the same floor we had just been.” Motor Runner said as he gently rubbed his chin with his cybernetic forehoof. “Hmm, am I right Wirbelwind?”

The addressed pegasus stepped forward, Fruity tensed and took a step back, and nodded. “That is correct, but the security for that floor is active. You’ll have to be careful as you’ll be dealing with ceiling turrets of both ballistic and energy variants,”

“What about the security station, can’t we just turn them off with the terminal there?” Fruity asked.

“Unfortunately not. The security station is sealed because the floor above has collapsed into the room preventing all access.”

“Bollocks,” Fruity groaned.

“Why can’t anything be simple out here?” I whined.

“That is the way of the wasteland my dear Crystal, if it was easy we wouldn’t have to fend for ourselves so dearly,” Motor Runner said with a shake of his head.

“What did you come here for?” Fruity asked. The armoured pegasus bristled, like he was expecting something bad to happen.

“Calm yourself Wirblewind, we do not need to worry about these two,” Motor Runner said calmly to his smaller friend. “Don’t mind him, he’s been a loyal friend of mine since he became a Dashite, now,” Motor Runner coughed to clear his throat. “We came here looking for information on Particle Accelerators. I have a few powerful ones in my possession that require some work but I needed to find information and schematics so my restoration teams can restore them. We found what we were looking for and are now heading back home.”

“Oh, cool,” I said, not really understanding what a particle accelerator was but it sounded important.

“What would you need hazmat suits for, not planning on going somewhere dangerous are you?” He asked.

“Um, heh actually we are,” I said with a nervous chuckle. “We found out where I might find out about my past and it happens to be in the crater, that’s why we need the suits,” I explained.

“I see, well I wish you the best of luck in your journey and be very careful down on Floor 93. We only destroyed the security in where we needed to be, so the rest of the floor’s security will be active.”

I nodded in thanks.

“Sir, we better go now if we want to avoid another storm,” Wirbelwind said with concern. “Since my armour is incomplete I can only take so much during a RadStorm,” He was helmetless afterall.

The large purple stallion nodded. “Yes, it is best we make our leave. Good luck Crystal and Fruity. If you get what you need and go to the crater, watch yourself and be on your guard at all times, it is not a very hospitable place,” And with that the tall and handsome stallion turned and began to walk away, his long legs taking him away quickly. Wirbelwind nodded to each of us before he followed after his friend.

We watched as the two ponies left before we turned and entered the lift they used and pressed the button for Floor 93 like Motor Runner had informed us was a good floor to check. As the elevator began its journey down Fruity spoke his mind.

“I wonder what he needs particle accelerators for?” He asked nopony in particular.

“I don’t know but, um, what’s a particle accelerator?” I asked.

“Huh, oh, a particle accelerator is a device that uses electromagnets to accelerate particles to high speeds,” The pegasus shivered in a grimace as he seemed to remember something. “That reminds me, one of the Enclave Thunderheads was fitted with an experimental Particle Accelerator Cannon. I don’t know the details of it since I just overheard an off-duty soldier talking about it one night while during my shift.”

What Fruity just said raised more questions, and considering they were about the Enclave and his history with them, I decided to wait till a later date to question him about what was on my mind. Right now though we had to focus on the floor full of security so we could recover a pair of hazmat suits.

“Can’t this thing go any faster?” Fruity complained while he watched the floor number dwindle down as we approached our floor. “There’s a thought, why are these lifts working when the ones on the ground aren’t?”

“Huh, oh, um I would say because the tower it so tall the elevators can only go so far up so they would need another set of elevators to go the rest of the way,” I replied.

He nodded in understanding as he started to prance in place.

“Are you ok?” I asked with concern.

“Yeah, just… don’t like being stuck in tight spaces for a long time.”

I sat next to him and wrapped my foreleg around his shoulders and hugged him close. I smiled softly as I felt him relax a little. “Don’t worry Fruity, I’m here with you.”

“Thanks, Crys.”

I kissed his cheek just as the lift slowed down and then came to a shuddering stop. Once it stopped and settled it dinged and the doors opened. I smiled and let Fruity out of the lift first. The pegasus took a deep breath and sighed in relief.

“Glad I’m out of there.”

I nodded and looked around. The lift had dropped us off in a T-junction, corridors stretched out ahead of us and on either side, giving us three separate directions to go.

“Um, where do we start?” Fruity asked.

I opened my mouth to make a snarky comment when I noticed a direction marker on my EFS. “I might have something,” I said and turned my head to the right until the direction marker was dead centre with my compass. “I have a direction marker on my EFS pointing that way,” I announced while pointing at a wall between the right and middle hallways.

Fruity turned to face the same direction. “So the suits could be around the north-eastern corner of the building?”

“It seems it,” I replied with a nod.

“Alrighty then, let’s hurry up and get this over with.”

With a nod we began to walk down the right hallway. As we began down the corridor we passed doors that led into labs for testing an assortment of different things. Some of the doors even had hazard warnings for corrosive and harmful materials, but they were not the labs we needed to check so we had no need to enter them. We soon came to a ninety degree turn and as soon as we stepped around to start following the corridor up, we heard a mechanical clunking sound and then a deep beep from above further ahead. Ahead of us in the top corner of the corridor before a doorway was a black dome-like device that had opened up, a central piece dropped down with a yellow light and a barrel of sorts which extended out when it beeped. The yellow light turned red at the exact same time my threat warning flashed in my HUD and the ceiling device began to fire bullets at us in a rapid stream.

“HOLY FUCKING CELESTIA’S FAT FLANK!” Fruity cursed as we scrambled to take cover back around the corner we just came from.

I slipped onto my rump as I made a quick turn as bullets whizzed by. Just as I picked myself back up I felt a sharp burning sting on my forehead and I yelped as I jumped behind the safety of the wall. Fruity galloped for the corner before letting out a cry of pain as bullets impacted him in his right hind leg. He fell onto his side before making it completely behind the wall so I grabbed him with my forehooves and pulled him to safety as quick as I could.

“Shit, what the hell was that?” I cried in shock.

“Argh fuck,” Fruity groaned as he sat up. “Ceiling turret, can’t believe we forgot about the security being active.”

I mentally facehooved. “Yeah, um, are you ok?” I asked with worry for my coltfriend.

“I’ll be right as rain once I down a healing potion,” He replied as he opened a wing and tucked his head under it so he could stuff his muzzle into his duster’s pocket. He groaned and grimaced in pain for a moment longer before he pulled his head back with a small bottle in his mouth, and with the use of his tongue he removed the cork and let the magic healing liquid pour into his muzzle. With a satisfied sigh, he sat back and watched as the few wounds on his leg heal.

The purple pegasus smiled at me. “We were lucky there, that turret nearly got us by surprise,” He said before he tilted his head as he looked at me.

“What is it?” I asked when I noticed him staring.

“You got a hole in your hat,” He said as he reached up and plucked my stetson off my head and showed me were a small circular hole sat at the base of my hat where the wide brim began. His eyes then widened with shock as he stared at my uncovered forehead now. “Fuck me Crystal; it’s a good job your skeleton is made of metal now, damn!”

“Huh?” I asked confused and reached up and felt at my forehead with a hoof and froze when I felt a small metallic object lodged into my forehead. “I… I been shot in the head,” I squeaked and quickly rubbed at the wound until the bullet popped out and fell to the floor.

“Yeah, thank Celestia turrets use low calibre bullets,” Fruity remarked nonplussed by the event.

“I could have died!” I shrieked as I held a hoof over my chest as I could feel my heart hammering in my chest from the sudden terror at the thought I could have been killed from taking that hit.

“Whoa, whoa easy,” Fruity urged as he grabbed my shoulders. “Calm down Crys, you’re fine, you’re not hurt, breathe.”

I panted but nodded and took a few deep calming breaths before my racing heart finally began to slow down and my breathing was brought back under control.

“I hate to remind you of this, but your skeleton is made of metal and it’ll take something stronger than what those turrets have to pierce it, but that doesn’t mean you should just be a bullet sponge.”

I gave Fruity a flat look. As if I’ll be willing to put myself in the line of fire like that. I may be able to withstand low calibre rounds but it doesn’t mean I’ll lose my sense of mortality. I’m still organic at heart, literally and figuratively speaking as well.

The pegasus didn’t seem to notice the look I gave him as he turned around and back to the corner. He pressed himself flat against the wall and edged his way to the corner and slowly peeked his head out to look around.

“Turret is still active; we’ll need to destroy it if we are to progress further.”

Beep!

“FACK!” Fruity yelled and quickly pulled his head back just in time to avoid a stream of bullets.

I rushed over to him. “Are you alright?!” I asked in worry.

“Yeah, yeah,” He breathed out in relief. “Fucking hate ceiling turrets,” He muttered as he prepared his Q-Modulator. The plasma assault rifle thrummed to life and glowed brightly with energy as Fruity stood on his hind legs and held the weapon in his forelegs. He used his wings to balance himself as again he walked close to wall and prepared to lean out with his rifle. “Crystal, can you act as a decoy to draw its attention?” He asked.

“I beg your pardon?” I shrieked.

“It’s not because of that I swear. That bloody thing will be pointing this way as soon as I step out to shoot it. If you run out quickly to draw it away from the corner, I can blast it before it can lock on, I promise,” He urged.

“If it shoots me, I’m gonna slap you,” I threated and gulped as I prepared to run into the corridor. What the hell am I doing?

This is so thrilling,” I swear I heard that voice say in the back of my head.

“Ready?” Fruity asked as he held his weapon ready to fire.

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” I groaned. I could feel my heart beat hard again in my chest with the anxiety of what I was about to do.

“NOW!” Fruity yelled.

I let out a scream as I ran into the corridor with my eyes closed and began to run up towards the door. I heard the turret whir as it repositioned and tracked my movement.

“Gotcha bitch!” Fruity shouted smugly as he released a burst of plasma bolts into the ceiling mounted turret.

I skidded to a stop when the turret exploded and fell from its mount and crashed onto the floor in front of me with a resounding clang.

“Oh thank the goddesses,” I sighed in relief that he destroyed it before it fired at me.

Fruity slung his rifle and stepped up beside me. “There we go, that wasn’t so bad now was it,” He said with a dumb smile.

I extended a wing and gave him a light clip to the back of the head.

“Ow what was that for,” He whimpered.

“Using me as cannon fodder,” I grumbled.

He rubbed the back of his head as he gave an apologetic chuckle. “Hehe sorry but it was the only thing I could think of for us to get passed it.”

“Let’s try to avoid that next time shall we,” I sighed.

He nodded as he then approached the destroyed turret and began to root around inside it. He used a combination of his wings and hooves to rip out a pair of circuit boards, and then a small box that was a little deeper inside.

“What’s all that?” I asked.

“These,” He said as he held up the circuit boards. “Are its targeting system. It can sell for a good price and this,” He then gestured to the small box. “Is the ammunition feeder. By taking this out we get all the rounds within the turret itself,” He used his hooves to pry open the lid and then pour the bullets onto the flat of his hoof. “And this thing contained… fifteen, ten millimetre bullets. Kinda useless for our current loadout but again we can sell these.”

I nodded in agreement. Once he was finished pilfering the destroyed turret for anything useful we continued on. The corridor took another right turn beyond the door and we stopped just before the corner.

“Does your EFS pick up anything?” Fruity asked as he prepared his weapon again.

I looked down to the bottom left of my HUD and saw two red bars on my compass, the direction putting them down the corridor. I nodded. “Yes, two hostile targets down the hallway.”

He nodded as he held his weapon. With a deep breath in and a slow exhale he stepped out around the corner. I watched with baited breath as he quickly raised his weapon and fired a burst of plasma fire down the corridor at a target I couldn’t see while still being behind cover. His burst of plasma was shortly followed by a small explosion to signal that a turret got destroyed but that still left one more hostile target. My threat warning flashed and I quickly grabbed Fruity by his tail and yanked on it hard, pulling him quickly back behind the safety of the corner wall just in time to avoid a stream of red energy beams that began to hit the floor where he stood.

“Faust that was close,” Fruity sighed. “And OW!”

“What is that?” I asked with wide eyes as I watched the red energy beams lace the floor for a good minute before it stopped, leaving the old laminated floor sizzling.

“There were two turrets at the end of the hall, both are arcane laser turrets,” He grumbled. “I hate those ones the most, armour can get quickly chewed to pieces by the intense energy beams and they can turn ponies to ash if a good percentage of the beams hit in quick succession.”

I felt even more nervous about dealing with high end security now. Just how far did ponies go to protect what was theirs?

Fruity leaned his head out to find the turret but quickly pulled his head back and it was a good thing he did as arcane lasers quickly followed and began to burn into the floor again.

“Cock and bollocks!” Fruity cursed. “Damn thing must have a sensor; it’s still pointing this way!”

“What about distracting it?” I asked nervously.

“Not this time, the lasers will be something that’ll tear you apart. I can’t risk that,” Fruity said as he gave me a serious look.

“How are we going to get passed it?”

“Heh, by blindly shooting around the corner,” He said as he stepped away from the corner and gestured for me to sit there instead. “I think you’ll have to do it, your tail can hold the gun without exposing any part of you. Keep the weapon as low to the floor as possible as to try and avoid its sensor.”

I gulped and nodded as I sat down by the corner as instructed. I then took Lucky 13 out of its holster with my nano-fibre tail, and threaded the hairs around the grip and trigger to hold it securely before snaking the gun across the floor so it was pointing down the corridor. I took a deep breath to steady my nerves as I slowly leaned my head out so I could see my target, just enough to let me see the turret. It was nestled in the far-left corner at the end of the hall before another door; it looked just the same as the other turret apart from the barrel being a laser emitter. I tilted the revolver up and to the side so it was pointing in the turret’s general direction before I pulled my head back behind the wall and began to squeeze the trigger with my tail. The small but powerful revolver fired off round after round. I could hear how one round obliterated a ceiling tile while another imbedded itself in the far wall but the third struck the turret as there was a resounding clang. My fourth shot was a miss as well but my fifth and sixth shots both hit, and I think my final bullet must have hit something vital because the red marker disappeared from my EFS.

“The red marker is gone,” I announced.

“Good shooting Crys,” Fruity praised.

I smiled and let out a sigh of relief, and then holstered my spent revolver and stood up. We trotted down the corridor until we came to the door. Fruity spent a minute looting the destroyed turrets for junk and some extra micro-mana cells before we opened the door. Once open, we found ourselves inside a relatively large laboratory, the wall to the left of us was entirely made of glass and we could see outside into the ruined city. I felt grateful to the ponies that built this place for installing sturdy windows; Celestia knows the chaos we’d be under with strong winds blowing through here. The lab seemed pretty boring and bare, like everything was put away and cleared before the evacuation took place, but there were two things that did catch our interest. Two pedestals close to the glass wall, a good ten hooves apart from each other and surrounded by an arcane containment field, and floating inside these containment fields above the pedestals was a smooth green crystal about the size of my hoof above one and a jagged blue crystal in the other.

“What are those?” I asked in curiosity as I approached the containment fields. However, as I got within five hooves of the green crystal’s containment field my PipBuck began ticking and I quickly jumped back. “Whoa, radiation spike!”

“Wow really, from what?” Fruity asked as he joined me.

I simply pointed at the green crystal.

“Huh, I guess that’s why they are behind those shields, just how many rads did you take?”

“I don’t know, I didn’t look.”

“Why don’t you go check it out?” He asked.

I gasped in shock. “You want me to see just how much radiation those things give off?”

“I’d do it myself but I don’t have a PipBuck and I can’t simply borrow yours since it’s fixed to your leg,” He explained as he lifted a wing and dipped his head back into a pocket for a moment before pulling back. “I do have a Rad-Away so you’ll be cured of any radiation you take.”

“You better get it ready, I don’t want to be glowing like a lava lamp and melting through the floor,” I whined and approached the green crystal’s containment field. Why am I doing this? My PipBuck began ticking again and my HUD began to display Rads per second in the top right corner of my vision. As I entered the radiation it started at one rad per second but by the time I reached the shield, it was reading five rads per second. “Five rads,” I called back to Fruity before I quickly made my way back.

I shivered after getting out of the radiation. Being close to that green crystal made me feel uneasy, like there was something sinister about the crystal. I gulped down my nerves and approached the blue one, I began taking rads well before I got as close to it like the green one which told me the blue one was stronger, and boy was it! By the time I got to the shield I was taking twenty rads; and I quickly turned tail and ran back to Fruity so I could get out of that heavy radiation. I yelped as I felt a slight electric shock run up my spine when my tail slapped against the shield as I turned quickly.

“You ok?” Fruity asked as he gave me a glowing orange pouch.

“Yeah, just got a slight shock from the shield, and thank you,” I said with a smile as I took the pouch and drank down the tangy orange fluid. I sighed with relief as I felt the medicine settle and purge the little accumulation of radiation I attained.

“WARNING, INTRUDERS DETECTED IN TIBER CRYSTAL LABORATORY!”

“Ponyfeathers,” Fruity cursed as he whirled around looking for threats as a warning siren sounded after the alert.

I did the same but I couldn’t see anything in the room that would easily stand out as a turret and I didn’t see any red markers on my compass either, but we’ve been detected so something might turn up.

“I don’t see anything,” Fruity said looking around while on his guard.

“Me neither,” I agreed while examining the room. As I scanned the room, I saw my direction marker hovering over a door to the left on the far side from the door we came in from. “There, that door, that’s where we need to go,” I pointed out with a wing.

“Ok, let’s get the hell out of here before something shows up.”

I nodded, but as we made for the door a ceiling tile dropped to the floor from the very centre of the room which made us pause.

“What was that?”

“Hostile!” I warned with my wings flared as I stared up at the hole in the ceiling now.

As we stared up at the ceiling, a reflective dome descended from the hole. It reminded me of one of those large old CCTV camera units from a department store that looked like a giant half sphere. However, this thing had a pure reflective surface; and as we stared at it, confused to what it could be, an electric hum began to fill the air.

“F-Fruity, what is that?” I asked, afraid of what the dome like device could be as the surface began to shimmer with electricity.

“Err… Oh no.”

“What, what is?” I asked with wide eyes.

“Tesla Coil, run, hurry, NOW!” Fruity urged and he barged into my side to get me moving.

As we began to run for the door that my direction marker had indicated, the dome was glowing brightly and crackled with power. Suddenly, a bright arc of electricity shot down from the Tesla Coil and began to tear across the floor before it dissipated.

“Oh shit!”

We jumped over tables and chairs as we made for the door. Fruity made it to the door first and threw it open.

“Quickly, inside, hurry!” He urged frantically but then his eyes widened in alarm. “Crystal look out!”

I did the stupidest thing possible and turned around. I gasped in shock as an electrical arc from the trap was barrelling towards me. I found myself frozen in fear as the arc jumped from the floor and collided with my armoured chest piece, but as it hit, it stopped. However, despite the hit only being on my armour and lasting for but a moment, it seeped through the armour, my skin and into my endoskeleton and I could feel how my body responded. It spasmed hard and I felt like someone was poking me with a million white hot needles at once. When the sensation subsided, I opened my eyes and “System Error!” briefly flashed across my vision before it disappeared.

“Crystal, shit, get your curvy flank in here now!”

I groaned as I quickly turned and ran into the room. Fruity quickly shut the door behind me to prevent the Tesla Coil from sending an arc in after us.

“Fuck!” Fruity exclaimed as he grabbed my shoulders and looked me over with worry in his eyes. “Are you ok, are you hurt?” He asked worriedly.

“I… I feel ok, although my power cell is fully charged now,” I assured him. I felt a little shaken but other that and being fully recharged, I felt fine. Suddenly my vision flickered for a brief moment like a lightbulb on its way out. Ok, may be I’m not fine.

The room we found ourselves in was pretty small. It was nothing but a storeroom for the hazmat suits used by the scientists that once worked in Starlight Tower, and there were quite a few of them here, all hung up on coat hooks. Most of them were yellow with bubble like helmets apart from two of them. The two that stood out were white and these white ones had extra pouches on the sides to suggest they were pegasi suits.

“I guess we found them,” Fruity said as he pulled down one of the white ones. “Heh, these kinda look like the Enclave Environmental Suits but without Enclave markings.”

“They do?” I asked while I reached for the other one.

Fruity nodded as he began to fold up the suit and then slipped it into one of his magic pockets.

As I picked my suit off the hook my vision went fuzzy all of a sudden. “System Error!” Appeared again across my vision and instead of seeing in colour when everything cleared up again, I was seeing everything in shades of electric blue. I stood frozen with my eyes wide, not sure what to make of my sudden change in visual quality, but before I could dwell on it any further my vision flashed and I was able to see again in full colour again as “System Restored” flashed across my vision.

“Hey, you ok, you’ve been staring into space for a little while now,” Fruity asked as he poked my flank.

“I… I think something’s wrong,” I whimpered worriedly.

“What do you mean?” He asked with worry.

“My eyes, they lost colour for a moment and I saw it flash “System Error” and “System Restored” before everything went ok again.”

Fruity’s ears wilted sadly. “I’m not much of a technical pony. If something technical like that has gone wrong with you Crystal, I… I don’t think I could help you.”

I gently hugged him. “Hey, don’t worry about that Fruity. I think I have a self-repair function. It did say “System Restored” after all. I guess I just need to keep my body topped up with whatever it needs to run the functions and I should be able to just repair myself like my wings and fetlock have repaired themselves,” I told him. “I hope,” I added mentally.

He gave a weak smile. “Ok, but if you continue to have problems, maybe we should pay the doctors at Tenpony a visit. I know there is one doctor that specialises in cybernetics or some other doings like that there.”

I nodded in agreement and folded up the suit I picked and slipped it into my new overcoat’s magic pocket. Now we just need to get past the Tesla Coil, oh joy.

Fruity opened the door a crack and peeked out. “Oh, it looks like the Tesla Coil is about to blow up, it’s smoking up a storm,” He said and then opened the door fully. Sure enough, the dome like device was smoking badly as it discharged electricity in random directions. I suppose not being used for nearly two hundred years and then suddenly being forced to use a lot of power didn’t agree with its circuitry. “I guess we can wait for it to blow itself up.”

I nodded before my vision started flickering again. I whimpered in worry as the system error message appeared again while my vision felt like it was flicking on and off, like somepony was rapidly turning a light switch on and off. It lasted for about a minute before it seemed to sort itself out and the system restored message appeared again. I think that Tesla Coil affected me more than I realised.

The Tesla Coil released another arc of electricity that tore across the floor that then jumped from the floor and struck the shield that contained the blue Tiber Crystal. The trap then exploded shortly after the discharge that hit the shield, but it left a sizeable arcane crack in the shield’s surface and it began to spider web, like the radiation from the blue crystal was overwhelming the now compromised shield.

“We better get out of here before that shield breaks,” I cautioned.

“Yeah, I don’t want to glow in the dark,” Fruity said and with a nod we quickly ran out and crossed the torn-up lab. As we ran across the lab we noticed that the Tesla Coil had set a couple of tables on the far side on fire and it was slowly spreading, but it wasn’t of any of our concern so we ignored it and continued into the corridor to head back to the lifts.

When we reached the door where we encountered our first turret, I ground to a halt as my vision began to flicker again but this time it was really bad. It was so bad that I couldn’t really see because it was flashing so badly.

“Crystal, what’s wr… bloody nora, I can literally see your eyes flashing!” Fruity exclaimed when he turned around after he noticed I had stopped.

“I don’t know what’s wrong, but it’s so bad,” I squeaked in a panic.

The flashing got even worse that eventually everything went black and I found myself totally blind but before everything went dark the words, “System Reboot Initiated” flashed across my eyes.

“Oh damn, your eyes just dulled, what happened?” Fruity asked in concern.

“I CAN’T SEE!” I screamed fearfully in his face. Being blind like this felt similar to how I did back during when I was being upgraded where I was trapped in my head and had no sense of sight, sound or touch. At least I still had everything else at the moment but being unable to see, just total darkness was still very terrifying.

I felt two strong hooves grasp my shoulders and gently squeeze. “I’m here, don’t worry, we’ll get through this. I promise,” Fruity reassured me although he sounded like he was panicking himself.

“Please don’t leave me,” I practically sobbed, fearing he’d leave me on my own here and now that I currently had lost my sight. I mentally had to scold myself for thinking he would do that. He wasn’t that sort of pony and if he felt for me like I felt for him he wouldn’t even dream of such a thing.

“I’m not going anywhere, it actually hurts that you’d even think that,” He said in a hurt tone.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, I’m just panicking.”

“Well, come on,” He pulled away from me because I felt his forehooves leave my shoulders and then I felt his tail brush over my nose. “Hold my tail and I’ll lead you,” He said as he continued to brush his tail across my nose. His second pass made me let out a squeaky sneeze but on the third I clamped my jaws on his tail. With his tail in my mouth I could easily smell his musky male scent with a hint of mulberry. It was kinda pleasant to be honest.

“Eeyow, careful, that’s my tail, not a chew toy,” He whined.

“Sorry,” I mumbled with a mouthful of tail.

He began to walk forward, and his tail tugged in my mouth which prompted me to start walking forward. He kept at a slow pace and when we came to the right hoof turn to take us back to the lifts, he called out to me to let me know of the turn so I wouldn’t keep on walking forward and smack my nose into the wall. Shortly after we made the turn my vision flashed again and everything came back into focus and was clear again. As if to clarify that everything was well again the words “System Reboot Complete” flashed across my vision.

I let go of Fruity’s tail and let out a happy cheer that I could see again. “I can see, I can see!” I squealed in delight, even flapping my wings and rising up off the floor to the point I bumped my head into the ceiling.

“Heh, well that’s a relief,” Fruity said with a relieved smile. “Come back down and let’s get outta here.”

“System Error,” Flashed in my vision again and suddenly I fell out of the air and crashed into the floor like ton of bricks. I must have hit the floor with my full seven hundred and fifty-pound weight as I felt the floor buckle a bit beneath me and I swear I felt my hind leg bust and dangle through the ceiling of the floor below us.

“Faust above, I know I said come back down but jeez?” Fruity chastised as he jumped away to avoid me landing on him.

I groaned as I struggled to free myself from the small crater I made. “I dunno what happened. It was like the thingies that make me weightless so I can fly suddenly turned off.”

“That Tesla Coil must have knackered more than just your eyes; maybe we should go back to the tower?” Fruity suggested.

I shook my head. “No, we’ve come so far and I couldn’t break Xian’s heart by going back hurt like this only to leave and leave her behind again since we would still need to go to the crater. Once we get back down to the ground we’ll be fine, at least it’s not my eyes now right.”

“I still think we should go back in case something more serious goes wrong with you, but I understand not wanting to hurt Xian’s feelings. Are you really sure about this?” He asked while giving me a hard look.

I nodded just as I got the system restored message. “Not to mention we have that Quartermane fella waiting for us to near the crater’s rim.”

Fruity sighs. “Ah yes the old bloke, I don’t approve of this but you’re right, not like we can just call him using your PipBuck’s broadcaster. I don’t think you even know how to use it either do you?” I shook my head since I’ve never once had to use it so I actually won’t know what to do with it. “Then we can’t contact the tower either since we can’t tune into the tower’s frequency, which I don’t know either, and since you don’t know how to use your broadcaster it’ll be more trouble than its worth. Ugh, ok let’s move quickly and as soon as something happens we’ll stop until it corrects itself ok?”

I nodded in agreement and we continued up the corridor. Again the system error flashed across my vision and when I kicked off the floor while walking, I suddenly found myself floating upwards.

“Eep, Fruity, little help,” I squeaked as I flailed around helpless as I slowly rose into the air as if I was in space.

Fruity turned around and looked confused when he didn’t see me but then gasped when he saw me nearly touching the ceiling again. “Um, need a hoof?”

“Yes, please, get me down before I end up putting a hole through the floor again,” I whined.

Fruity flew up to me and grabbed my forehooves with his and gently pulled me back down so I could put my own hooves back on the floor. Once back on the ground he had to rest a wing on my back to keep me grounded.

“Good thing we’re inside,” He sighed.

I nodded grimly.

Again the system restored message flashed across my vision and I could feel my body getting its weight back as the talismans turned off. We made it to the lifts and boarded it and then hit the button for the top floor. We had little patience to stay in this tower any longer, especially for another malfunction to occur.

“Warning, Blue Tiber Crystal containment shield failure imminent!” Blared an alarm that made us worry.

“Oh, that can’t be good.”

“Malfunction detected in Tiber Crystal Lab security doors, containment door failure… Warning all personnel must evacuate upper half of Starlight Tower, Repeat, all personnel must evacuate upper half of Starlight Tower!”

“Knackers!” Fruity groaned while he began to rapidly press the button for the top floor as if to hope it’ll make it go faster.

“Um, what is a Tiber Crystal?” I asked. We probably would have had a look to see if we could have found anything on them in the lab, but considering the cleanliness of the lab plus the situation we found ourselves in, we couldn’t.

“Bollocks if I know, but if that blue one is causing such alarms then they can’t be anything healthy.”

I agreed and bit my lip in nervousness as I looked up at the rolling floor numbers while we waited for the elevator to take us to our floor. While I sat on my rump, it flashed the system error again in my vision and then suddenly the lift shuddered and groaned and the rolling floor numbers slowed down.

“Oh don’t take the piss, what now?” Fruity grumbled.

“I’m sorry,” I whimpered.

He looked at me and his sour expression softened. “It’s not your fault, but I don’t know if this lift can take your full weight.”

I gulped as I could hear the elevator groaning and whining as it struggled to haul us up with my levitation talismans temporarily offline. I found myself mentally chanting, “Please don’t fall, please don’t fall,” over and over again as it slowly dragged us up.

After a good couple of minutes of the lift struggling and giving us the terror ride of our lives with its shuddering and groaning it finally stopped on the top floor and we jumped out as soon as those doors opened.

“Oh thank fucking Faust for that,” Fruity cheered in relief as he hugged the solid floor.

“You got that right,” I sighed while flopping onto my chest and belly. My legs felt like jelly after that nerve wrecking ride, and as if to further take the mick my vision flashed the system restored message again. This is getting irritating. When we picked ourselves back up I felt the power to my wings stop which meant that the levitation talismans were offline again and like before when I went blind it told me that the system was rebooting. “My levitation thingies are being rebooted now,” I told Fruity as we headed for the reception room.

“Warning, containment shield failure imminent. Evacuate, five minutes until total containment shield failure, repeat, five minutes until total containment shield failure!”

“We better get back onto the landing pad like now and I hope your malfunction sorts itself out before we get doused in a shit ton of radiation,” Fruity exclaimed.

“Me too,” I agreed with worry while we ran out onto the large platform and into the pouring rain. Wonderful.

XXXXX

Units 1 and 2 sat in the courtyard of Starlight Tower looking up at the large platform that jutted out from the side of the spire like tower. They were fully aware that their prey was now standing on the platform but was yet to jump off.

“What is taking it so long?” Unit 2 asked in a rather bored tone.

“I’m not sure, something doesn’t about this doesn’t feel right,” Unit 1 remarked as she lowered her head and looked around for anything out of the ordinary, or perhaps something they missed when they came upon the checkpoint nestled in the courtyard. The bodies of Bourbon and Custard Cream still lay where they fell when Bourbon tried to attack them. The old mare attacking them had surprised them at first, but they soon understood why when the memories of the ponies they had in their heads surfaced to reveal that the Gunners were not generally liked by a lot of ponies and are usually shot on sight like Raiders. Though a part of Unit 1 or Corporal Razzle felt pity for the two mares they had to put down, especially for the younger one.

“Come on, do something,” Private Buckshot whined.

“Patience brother, they’ll come down eventually, and when they do, we’ll be waiting for them,” Corporal Razzle stated matter-of-factly.

“That’s true, now that we have its mana-co… WHAT IN THE FLYING FUCK IS THAT?!” Buckshot suddenly shouted in alarm as his vision, audio receptors and pretty much all his other senses were being assaulted by vast amount interference.

“I don’t know what just happened up there, but these radiation levels are way too high even for us,” Unit 1 cried as she cringed back from the assault on her own senses. “Ahhh, retreat, retreat,” She ordered.

The two overwhelmed infiltrators quickly ran out of the courtyard and away from the tower until the radiation subsided enough that it wasn’t affecting their instruments.

“What the hell just happened?” Buckshot growled in annoyance.

“I don’t know, it felt like some sort of radiation bomb… but the radiation levels are subsiding,” She said as she looked up at the tower. “It’s now just concentrated around the upper half of the tower; however it is still at lethal levels up there.”

“And our target?”

There was a pause before Unit 1 replied. “Gone…”

“Fan-fucking-tastic.”

“Shut up Buckshot, none of us knew that was going to happen nor did we know we wouldn’t be protected against that much radiation. We may need to recalibrate our sensors to find it again but we know the frequency. I-01 won’t get too far away from us, not this time,” Razzle reassured her seething brother.

“You’re right. Hmm. So, which way?” Buckshot asked while he calmed down as he accepted his sister’s proclamation.

“They didn’t fly back this way, we would have seen them, so they flew either north or east. To regain I-01’s signature again we’ll head in a north-easterly direction.”

“Right sis. Right behind you.”

With a nod from the lighter armour coloured robot the two began to walk in the hope of finding the escaped Mark 1.

XXXXX

“My head is getting wet because of the hole in my hat,” I whined as I could feel the rain seeping through the hole the turret put through my hat and soaking into my hair.

“We’re pegasi, a little rain isn’t that bad,” Fruity said with a smile which quickly faded. “Has your levitation talisman thing finished with its reboot, we don’t have time to piss about up here?”

“No, it hasn’t alerted me yet,” I sighed.

“Cock!” Fruity grumbled while drawing out the word. I could understand his annoyance since we, well I, can’t exactly leave until it’s finished.

“ONE MINUTE UNTIL CONTAINMENT SHIELD FAILURE!”

“Oh fuck…” Fruity groaned. “Crystal, we need to go, like NOW!”

“I know, I know… come on, come on you piece of…” I stopped as my vision flashed with the message for the reboot being completed. “Oh thank the goddesses, its finished.”

“Great, let’s leg it bef…”

There was a loud crash from deep inside the tower that sounded like a large glass pane shattering, and suddenly a wave of energy washed over us both as it tore through the tower and out into the open air. My geiger counter started to tick like crazy, and if my HUD was to be believed, I was taking two hundred rads a second. The extremely high radiation was so great that it must have been overwhelming my circuits because my vision was filling with static and all sound was coming in fuzzy and distorted.

“Fruity, we need to get out of this radiation,” I shouted, mainly so I could actually hear myself.

“I’m only here, no need to shout, but yeah, let’s get the fuck out of here. I feel like I’m gonna puke my guts out,” He groaned.

We wasted no time in diving over the edge of the platform and spread our wings. I sighed with relief as I could feel the power return to my wings. I caught the air and began to glide alongside Fruity. We immediately banked right and began to fly north in the direction of the crater’s rim where we were to meet Quartermane.

By the time we descended down so we were not in open air and flying just above the street lamps, we made it just a couple of blocks away from the tower. My PipBuck had stopped clicking which meant we were no longer in the hot zone. We decided to land at an intersection and take a breather. We consumed a pouch of Rad-Away each since the exposure of those extreme rads had given us a hefty dose.

“Phew, that’s better,” Fruity sighed with relief as the tangy orange medicine did its job.

“Yeah, but um, I don’t think any pony will be exploring that tower anytime soon,” I added with a sigh. “I hope Bourbon and Custard Cream are ok.”

“Yeah, me too,” Fruity agreed and shook himself to rid himself of some of the water that accumulated on his duster and hat from the rain. Once he had flung most of it all over and on me like a dog that did’t like water, he began to look around before his eyes widened in alarm. “Ahh piss!”

“Are you ok Fruity?” I asked with worry, ignoring how drenched I felt.

“This could be bad,” He said as he approached a wall with some graffiti on it.

The wall in question had a very visible and large emblem painted on it, almost as if it was a gang tag. The emblem was a red coloured cog with an equine skull painted inside it, slightly tilted to one side. “What’s that?”

“This Crystal, is the mark of the Crimson Skulls. A very dangerous Raider group or was, they seemed to disappear overnight some time ago. Rumour has it that a Stable Dweller came into the gang one night, killed their boss, took over the gang and moved them to Sparkle World; but like I said, it’s just a rumour. To be honest I don’t know what actually happened to them, and there is no telling if there are still raiders using this territory since barely anypony ventures this far north these days.”

“How bad were they?” I asked with a worried gulp.

“Bad enough that they controlled a lot of the northern territories of Manehattan,” He explained as we began to tread through the old raider territory and the deserted shanty town, built up within the street made up of wooden shacks.

“If they were so big, how did they disappear so quickly?”

“Raider’s follow a simple balance of power structure. If you show you are the biggest, baddest, meanest son of a bitch out there and can kick pony ass left, right and centre, you’d get raiders wanting to follow you if you kept that up and showed your strength. The guy that led the Crimson Skulls was one mean motherfucker. He was ruthless and I kid you not, he had a suit of power armour. No pony with half a brain would dare challenge him until that Stable Dweller. If the rumour is total bullshit and the gang didn’t follow the dweller, then losing to him would have destroyed the gang’s confidence in each other, and likely caused it to splinter off and spread out to form their little raider bands elsewhere.”

“I guess that’s plausible,” I muttered while I watched where I was walking. Despite this place supposed to be devoid of raider scum they still left behind a great deal of their crap. Did raiders have a fetish for hooks and chains? Lampposts and walls seemed to be littered with chains and hooks, and unfortunately a good number of them still had skeletons hung up on them.

“Which way to the rim?” Fruity asked as we came to another intersection, this one decorated with cages hung from the traffic lights that spun the width of the road and hung up from the top of the lampposts.

“Um, up the left road, it should put us on a direct route but my direction marker is pointing straight head. I suppose it is pointing us to where Silver said we’d meet Quartermane.”

“Alrighty,” Fruity nodded and as we took a step to continue on, until a gruff voice spoke up.

“Well, well, well, if it isn’t the flying rat that killed our boss and his striped bitch,” The voice sneered.

We froze and I then became aware of about five hostiles surrounding us but they were concealed. I knew which directions they were in thanks to my compass but I couldn’t see them.

“Flying rat, heh, that’s a new one,” Fruity said with a roll of his eyes. “Come out and face us cowards,” He challenged.

A door opened as a dirty unicorn with a mohawk mane style stepped out. He was wearing some kind of makeshift armour, mostly metal but it looked cobbled together and had a frame-like piece with a wire mesh that went over and around his head. Raiders may be idiots but you have to hoof it to them, they can certainly build some interesting looking pieces of gear.

“Just you?” Fruity asked as he went to shrug his rifle off his back but the unicorn lit his horn and narrowed his eyes threateningly.

“I wouldn’t do that if I was you, rat,” He growled. “You killed our boss, now we want revenge on your sorry ass. So we’re gonna have a good old fashioned fight so I can crush you. You so much as touch your gun, or your bitch over there makes a move or goes for her guns, and my boys will put some sniper rounds in your backs,” He threatened.

“Heh, now that you mention it you do look sorta familiar, alright, I’ll play your game,” Fruity said puffing out his chest confidently.

“Fruity,” I whimpered worriedly.

“Don’t worry, he’s a raider, what’s he gonna do?” He asked with a smirked while he had his head turned to regard me.

My eye’s widened in alarm when I saw the raider’s horn glow. A metal baseball bat popped into existence next to him and floated in his green magical aura.

“FRUITY!” I screamed but I was too late. Fruity had turned around to face his opponent only to take a swing from the bat to his face. He cried out in pain and flipped over his back and landed on the floor with a pained cry.

“Fruity,” I cried in worry and began to run to him before a bullet smacked into the tarmac in front of me.

“You so much as move to help him, we’ll riddle you so full of holes it wouldn’t be funny for later,” The unicorn growled as he slowly approached Fruity with his bat held over his shoulder and then grinned maliciously. “Did you really expect me to play fair, you pathetic piece of shit?”

“You suck,” Fruity groaned painfully as he tried to get up.

“Big words from a sky walker reject,” The raider said before he swung his bat and hit Fruity on his haunch, the hit making a wet slap from the rain and sending him sprawling.

My pegasus friend cried out in pain as his back legs gave out and he collapsed to the floor again in a large puddle.

“Stop, please,” I begged with a sob.

“Shut your mouth wench,” The raider roared at me before he turned his attention back to his prey.

“Hehe, how does it feel featherbrain, feel good playing the hero now huh?”

Fruity let out a growl of pain and anger as he looked up at the raider just as he took another hit from the bat.

I felt utterly helpless. I know my endoskeleton is bullet proof to a degree but I don’t know to what extent and I don’t know what weapons this asshole’s friends are using. Plus if I throw caution to the wind and step in despite the risk of the bullets hurting me, they could turn around and kill Fruity which is something else I cannot risk. I want to stop him but without putting Fruity at risk as well I can’t do anything. Argh…

I helplessly watched as the unicorn tormented my coltfriend and beat him with the bat for a good couple of minutes, and left him looking battered and bruised. The unicorn dropped his bat which was stained with some blood where a couple of his hits had split Fruity’s skin.

“Time to die, you flying rat,” He growled.

“Suck… my… dick,” Fruity groaned out through his pain.

The raider didn’t reply, he raised his head while channelling as much magic as he could into his horn for what I assumed would be an offensive magical beam.

“NO PLEASE DON’T” I begged.

“STEEL RANGER!” One of the hidden raiders shouted suddenly.

The unicorn immediately stopped his charge, his eyes wide with worry as he turned his head to one of the buildings at the corner of the intersection. “WHAT?!”

“THERE IS A FUCKING TIN CAN COMING THIS WAY!”

“SHIT, OK BOYS LET’S GET OUTTA HERE,” The unicorn shouted before he looked at me with hate in his eyes. “You were lucky this time bitch, but we’ll leave your sorry asses to the Steel Ranger. Have fun,” And with that, he turned tail and fled back into the building he came from.

As soon as that foul pony was gone and out of sight, I immediately ran over to my broken friend. I had tears of emotional pain streaming down my cheeks as I sat beside him and threw off my shotgun and medical box as I went to tend to him. I opened the box and quickly plucked out a couple of healing potions and a couple of bandages that sadly got wet in the rain. While gently cradling Fruity’s head with one forehoof, I gently poured one of the potions into his mouth and then gently applied the bandages to the worst of the lacerated areas of his body. He looked horrible, with a swollen shut eye, busted lip, broken nose, several lacerations to his body, multiple missing feathers and possibly a broken bone or two. The raider didn’t hit him hard enough to kill, but it was hard enough to cause serious pain and discomfort. It’s like what Fruity had told me about Raiders: they like to torture their victims. I assumed from what I watched that he wanted him alive until the end so that he could do whatever it was he was doing before he got disturbed.

“Oh Fruity, please be ok,” I cried as I cradled him while I waited for the first healing potion to take effect.

He groaned in discomfort before gasping as the potion finally began to take effect. I watched the smallest of the cuts seal, and the swellings from where he was hit and in his eye go down. He breathed easier as he opened his eyes and looked up at me.

“Ugh, thank you, you’re a life saver,” He smiled warmly.

I smiled happily that the potion was doing its job and leaned down and kissed his partially healed nose. “I was so worried. I’m so sorry I didn’t help you,” I cried.

“No, don’t worry about it, they had us where they wanted us,” He groaned. I lifted the other bottle to his lips and let him drink down the potion to help heal more of the damage. “Ugh, Fruity you plonker you should have seen that coming,” Fruity chastised himself.

I hugged him softly as I sniffled. “Don’t blame yourself, you couldn’t have known he would do that,” I tried to defend him.

“He was a raider, he’d sell out his own mother if it meant saving his sorry ass,” Fruity sighed. “But we got bigger problems, we need to get out of here before that Steel Ranger gets here,” He urged as he tried to stand but found himself locked in my iron grip hug.

“You haven’t healed properly yet and aren’t the Steel Rangers the good guys?” I asked.

“Maybe back in your day they were, but now, they are just assholes,”

I blinked; surprised that the soldiers that were meant to defend Equestria were one still here and two now considered assholes. What changed?

“Why would they be seen as assholes now?” I asked in confusion.

“I’ll tell you later but right now we need to move, if he sees either of us he’s likely to kill us,” Fruity urged as he wiggled in my grip.

I began to feel the ground shudder from heavy impacts that were soon followed by metallic thuds from down the road that would lead us to the rim of the crater. I didn’t want to let Fruity up until the potions had finished all the healing they could do, but with the growing worry about the possibility of what this Ranger might do I let him go so we could make our escape. However, before we could try to find someplace to hide in or run to, a large black and grimy suit of power armour stomped onto the intersection.

“Shit…” Fruity groaned.

I tilted my head as I took in the Steel Ranger, his armour looked old, and I mean old, like it has been out here for a long, long time because despite the black paint it looked very rusty and full of grime and the model of the armour. I recalled seeing this on the news as being among the first suits Applejack had made from the Ministry of Wartime Technology, but I’m sure before I supposedly died she released a newer model than this one. Furthermore, when I looked at his helmet I noticed a hole, and that a unicorn horn was poking through it.

“Ah, perfect, bout time you two showed up, I was getting bored waiting out here,” The Ranger said, his voice sounding muffled by his helmet.

“What, wait… Quartermane?” Fruity gaped.

“That’s right.”

We both breathed a sigh of relief as the Ranger revealed himself to be the pony we were going to meet near the rim and was not a threat. Thankfully the raiders didn’t and fled at the sight of the power armoured pony, which was good for us since were in between a rock and a hard place.

“You showed up just in the nick of time there buddy, thanks,” Fruity said appreciatively.

“Yeah, a minute longer and Fruity might have been killed or probably both of us,” I added.

The armoured old stallion nodded. “I heard a commotion while I was walking back towards the tower and thought I’d check it out just in case it was you two. Good thing that I did,” He said as he stood before us. While in the suit of power armour he looked twice as big as a normal pony with how big and bulky the suit looked. Plus the minigun he held in a battlesaddle gave him a menacing appearance.

“You were going back?” I inquired.

“You took so long that I thought something had happened. I was heading back to the tower to see if I might run into you two on the way back, or at least find out if there was a change of plan from Silver once I got back to the tower,” He explained.

“Oh.”

“Sorry Quartermane, we uh, we ran into some complications while in Starlight Tower that slowed us down,” Fruity replied.

I nodded with a sigh. “Yeah, still active security, one of which kept us trapped in a room for a while, and…” I opened my mouth to continue but stopped myself before saying something I shouldn’t. “How much do you know about me?”

He tilted his helmeted head at my question and stared for a moment before he answered. “Are you asking if I know that you’re a robot or not?” I stiffened with my eyes going wide, not sure how to take that response. “Don’t worry, I’ve met plenty of cyborgs in my travels and you can trust me. Silver wouldn’t have told me if I couldn’t be trusted to keep that knowledge to myself.”

“Well that’s a relief. We don’t want everypony knowing her true nature, especially those Steel Ranger jackasses,” Fruity stated with a stomp of his hoof.

“Before we continue, let’s get out of this rain,” Quartermane suggested, and with a nod from us we turned and followed the large armoured pony back up the road the way he came from until we stopped at an old Spark-Battery Charging Station.

The building was small with a large extended roof covering the drive-throughs for the vehicle charging stations, all of which have long since been scavenged, leaving behind a hole in the floor. We followed Quartermane to a shutter door on the side of the building, and with a single hoof pull he threw the door up with a metallic clang as it rolled up. The maintenance shed inside was well maintained and held an assortment of junk and spare parts, as well as a large yellow frame which Quartermane walked in between. There was a beep from his armour before the back hissed and rose up off his back. The legs split down the middle and opened outwards. The sides around his barrel pulled back a little and rotated down to give the old stallion room to step out of his suit of armour.

“Ahh that’s better, make yourselves at home,” He said once he was fully out of his armour.

I elected to stay stood up since the rickety old wooden chairs he had lying around wouldn’t support my weight if I sat on them. I didn’t trust my talismans right now either. Fruity sat on one of them the wrong way around, crossing his forelegs on the top of the backrest and resting his chin on crossed forelegs.

“So you got slowed down by the security?” Quartermane asked as he prompted me to continue since we were now out of the rain and not being soaked.

“Since you know what I am, I had been hit by a Tesla Coil in a lab in there and it caused me to malfunction in my eyes and my wings, preventing me from being able to see and fly.”

“Ah yes, I could see how that would slow you down considerably,” The dark coloured old stallion agreed.

“Wait a minute,” Fruity suddenly piped up as his head shot up from his forelegs. “Those were both newly added to you from your upgrade, all your new stuff fucked up,” He said

I blinked at Fruity’s comment as I hadn’t thought of that before but he was right, my eyes and wings were both newly added and they were the only things to go wrong.

“New tech is never as good as the old tech,” Quartermane chuckled to himself.

“I hope I’m ok now though,” I sighed. I really didn’t want to go through another random malfunction.

“You are lucky it was a Tesla Coil that got you. If it was a Disruption based trap or weapon, then it would have had a much more potent effect on you,” Quarterment said with a serious tone.

I nodded with a gulp as I remembered our run in at the MASA HQ when Fruity had thrown a Disruption Grenade into a room to destroy a sentry drone; the blast’s shockwave sent my visual sensors into a tizzy.

“Hey Quartermane, got any alcohol? I could do with a drink,” Fruity asked.

“Sure, but I don’t think you’ll like it,” He said as the dark stallion’s horn glowed and a cabinet drawer opened. A brandy bottle floated out and over to Fruity, who then took it out of the air with his fore hooves.

Fruity pulled the cork from the bottle and sniffed the contents before he pulled his head back and wrinkled his nose in revulsion. “Phew, what’s in this?” Fruity asked as he held the bottle away.

“Brandy,” Quartermane answered.

“Good…” Fruity said but was cut off as Quartermane wasn’t finished.

“Meth, Pernod, paint stripper, Mr Sheen, brake fluid and Drambuie,” Quartermane lists off the rest of his cocktail’s ingredients. I was just left shocked and amazed by them.

“Drambuie… ooohoohoohoohooooo!” Fruity chides playfully while he made limp-wristed gestures with his hoof at the older stallion.

“Yeah, yeah alright, you gotta put something in it for the fillies haven’t ya?”

Fruity took another sniff of the lethal cocktail and pulled back again. “Phew jeez!” He then looked at Quartermane in astonishment. “How are you alive?”

The old stallion taps his nose. “I may very well not be,” He replied cryptically.

Fruity looked at him with a raised brow before he puts the bottle down. “You know what, I’m good thanks.”

Quartermane laughed to himself before he gathered some tools in his magic and went to his armour to start doing some maintenance on it.

“When you are ready, we’ll move out.”

XXXXX

Units 1 and 2 head been walking in the rain for a good couple of hours in their north-easterly direction before both of them turned their heads to the left, back to a northerly direction.

“Do you feel that sister?” Buckshot asked as he stopped walking.

“I do Buckshot. That’s a Mana-Core signature that belongs to a Mark 2,” Corporal Razzle replied.

They changed direction and began to head in the direction of the energy signature.

“Wait, I’m picking up a second, weaker signature further north… could the stronger signal be the rogue unit?” Buckshot asked.

“If it is, we will deal with it if it gets in our way, come on,” Razzle urged as she broke into a run to close the gap between them and their target.

XXXXX

We had spent about an hour in the recharging station waiting for the rain to stop, and once it did we set off again. Fruity and I had donned our hazmat suits and were covered head to tail in our white environmental suits. Not a single part of our bodies was exposed and it was kinda weird having my head in this half bubble helmet.

Quartermane was in his suit of armour again, but this time he had attached a jetpack to the back that would allow him to fly for as long as he had enough fuel. It was surprising that he was able to do that. I didn’t think jetpacks even existed for power armour but I can’t see them actually being useful in battle back during the war.

We had spent a further hour walking towards our destination and eventually a wall of rubble came into view up ahead that blocked the road.

“There it is ponies. The crater’s edge,” Quartermane announced. “We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

I felt butterflies in my stomach from the nervousness of being so close to finding my answers.

“Hey Quartermane. Silver said you were an explorer right?” Fruity asked as we walked alongside him.

“That’s right.”

“Ever heard or seen anything called a Tiber Crystal?” He asked. Oh yeah, we were curious about those earlier.

“As a matter of fact I have, why do you ask?” The armoured unicorn asked, sounding surprised by Fruity’s question on the poisonous crystals we encountered.

“Well in Starlight Tower, we found two containment shields that held two of them, a green and a blue one. The shield that held the blue one failed and doused the building in high levels of rads. We were wondering if you knew anything,” Fruity explained and I nodded to show my own curiosity.

“So that’s what that massive radiation spike was. Well, I haven’t actually seen the crystals myself but I did find documentation that talked about them,” Quartermane began. “Shortly after the Littlehorn incident, a Zebra was confronted and killed on the banks of the Tiber River on the Badlands side of the Everfree Forest. He carried with him two specialised capsules that held a crystal each. According to the documentation recovered, the Zebra was to infiltrate Equestria and plant these crystal seeds into Equestria’s two largest food production farms, and allow the poison that they radiate to poison Equestria’s food supply. His targets were Sweet Apple Acres and Appleloosa’s Apple Orchard. Since the document the zebra held didn’t have a name for these crystals, the Equestrian Military that stopped him decided to call them “Tiber Crystals”, after the river they were recovered from before they were shipped to Starlight Industries for testing and analysis.”

“Wow, shit,” Fruity said in surprise. “I wasn’t expecting them to be anything that serious, damn!”

“Those Zebras stepped over the line with Littlehorn. They still were going to use chemical weaponry even after that horrible act?” I asked in shock.

“Yeah, that was a catastrophe,” Fruity agreed solemnly.

“Both sides did things that were horrible to each other, we all know how it ended for all of us in the end,” Quartermane sighed as we came up to the wall of rubble between two destroyed buildings. “Now, we climb, or we fly up.” And with that, the jets on his jetpack ignited and a powerful thrust began to lift the armoured unicorn off the ground and ascend the rubble.

Fruity and I looked at each other before we took wing and followed him up. The buildings on either side of us were very damaged and the tonnes of rubble nestled between them wasn’t helping them. We ascended about a hundred feet before we landed on the top of the rubble. I decided to keep my talismans active, despite not being sure if they would be ok to stay active, as I didn’t trust the loose rubble under my hooves. Quartermane found a rather sturdy spot that thankfully supported the weight of his power armour fairly well.

“Crystal, Fruity,” He said before he gestured with his foreleg to the sight before us. “Welcome to the Impact Crater,” He said while sweeping his foreleg out.

From atop the rubble wall we could see that it wasn’t just between these buildings, but this wall was actually a ring of rubble that looked to have been blow away from the point of impact and settled at the very edge. Inside the crater, it looked like an entirely different environment to what was outside. The buildings were all mangled and twisted; the ones closest to the point of impact were literally blown down, almost flat to the ground and up against their neighbouring buildings, creating jagged slopes of concrete and steel. The very centre from where we could see was just flat and open; there was nothing there apart from the hole that was glowing brightly with a bright green baleful glow. To top off the horrible look of this place, a rad storm seemed to be raging over the central area of the crater, showering it in a green haze and yellow lightning.

“Dear sweet Luna, this place looks like something straight out of a horror movie,” I gaped in shock.

“No shit,” Fruity agreed.

“I’m sorry to say this but Paradigm Cybernetics is on the far side of this crater, if you still want to go then there are two ways about it. One we skirt around the edge, it’ll take longer and leave us open to more enemy attacks but it’ll keep us out of the radiation zones and out of sight of the more dangerous creatures. Two, we head in on the shortest route to get there as soon as possible, your suits should keep the rads at bay but the closer we get to the point of impact, the more likely we are at running into the more dangerous creatures. What’s your choice?”

I stared into the storming centre of the crater for a minute, trying to decide on what to do before I turned to look at Fruity for guidance. “What do you think?” I asked.

“I don’t know, both options suck,” He replied, and to be honest, I agree.

“What would you do Quartermane?” I asked him.

“Personally, I would go the shortest route, despite the longer route being the safer; we’d be under threat more than the shorter. If we move fast enough on the shorter, there is a chance we might even avoid the more dangerous creatures. We just need to be careful and observant.”

“Ok, we’ll trust you, we’ll take the short route,” I said. I just hope I don’t regret this.

Chapter 14: Paradigm

View Online


Fallout Equestria: Influx

Chapter 14: Paradigm


Three years before the balefire strikes and two years after the production of I-01 had begun.

Las Pegasus Science Expo.

A dark green earth pony stallion slowly walked through the many different exhibits on display as he searched for one pony. The exhibits displayed many different contraptions ranging from weapons, robots, surveillance systems, and many other different types of technology, but the stallion ignored them all which would usually interest a member of the MoA or somepony working with advanced technology.

“Where are you?” He asked himself quietly as he stood in the middle of an aisle facing the showcase stage.

Suddenly spotlights flashed on and begun to twirl around to get the attention of the crowd, and loud speakers began to announce the next showcase.

“Mares and gentlecolts, we have an extra special event this evening here at the expo by our very own tech genius,” There was a pause for dramatic effect which caused the dark green stallion to roll his eyes. “Mr Edwin Horse!” There was a cheer from the crowd that was familiar with Mr Horse’s work.

The announced name got the attention of the dark green stallion and he approached the stage. The pony that came out onto the stage was a yellow earth pony stallion with a small moustache, and a brown mane and tail that was well groomed. His cutiemark was a set of three gears. He was dressed in a black tuxedo with a white undershirt and red tie as he approached the microphone stand.

“There you are,” The green stallion said to himself as he turned away from the stage and began towards the backstage door at one side of the stage just as Mr Horse began his demonstration, which was a new line of Sentry Drones.

A security guard stepped in the way as the dark stallion approached the door. “I’m sorry, only backstage employees and authorised personnel are allowed through here,” The stallion said authoritatively.

“Stand aside,” The dark green stallion said gruffly as he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out an identification card with a forehoof, and showed it to the security guard. The guard took the card and examined it, and his eyes widened in shock.

“Y-yes sir, err, right away,” The security stallion quickly got out of the way. “My apologies Colonel.”

Colonel Ironside nodded to him as he pushed through the backstage door and into the hallway behind. He looked up and down the corridor before settling on a direction. He turned to the left and began for the dressing rooms, one room in particular.

*2 Hours Later*

Mr Horse opened the door to his dressing room with a big smile on his face after his successful demonstration.

“That went just as well as I had predicted it would,” He said smugly. “I’ll be getting plenty of offers for those new Mark IIIs after that good reception. Robronco will be quite profitable this year.”

“You certainly kept me waiting Mr Horse,” Colonel Ironside said as he stood up from where he had been sitting in a shadowed corner.

“Holy horseapples who the hell are you?” The yellow earth pony yelped in surprise.

“Colonel Ironside,” The dark green stallion said with a strong authoritative voice.

“C-colonel, um, what do I owe the pleasure,” Mr Horse asked with a little nervousness in his voice.

“I am interested in a very specific piece of technology you recently developed,” The colonel said as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a sheet of paper. He then chucked it onto the table against the wall and gestured for Mr Horse to take a look.

Mr Horse hesitated for a moment before he stepped up to the table and looked at the piece of paper. He saw that it was a printout of a photograph of a rectangular microchip that was of his design. “Wait a minute… this is my prototype Neural Processor.”

Ironside nodded. “Indeed, I am very interested in these and I would like a large quantity produced immediately.”

“Now hang on a minute! I know you are a colonel but who do you think you are just coming in here and demanding I give you something?”

“I am a colonel in the Ministry of Awesome and the head of the Espionage Department,” He then tilted his head forward and looked at Mr Horse in the eyes, giving him a hard almost threatening stare. “And it would be in your best interest to give me what I want,” He said darkly.

Mr Horse gulped. “H-how can I h-help you sir?”

“I have a special project in development outside of the city limits and I require those Neural Processors.”

“The Neural Processor is still experimental and still needs some work,” Mr Horse tried to deter the colonel.

“For what I need, that chip will be just perfect and in a large quantity, I do know you can mass produce them.”

“J-just how many are you after?”

“Enough for one thousand units with some spare just in case some do not meet standards.”

“ONE THOUSAND?!” Mr Horse shrieked. “Y-you can’t be serious?”

“I am deadly serious. I have big plans for those chips,” Colonel Ironside said as he approached Mr Horse and stood almost over him, intimidating him. “I can be your best friend or your worst nightmare Mr Horse. I want those chips. Either I get those chips or I can see to it that your career falls apart in the blink of an eye,” He threatens.

“You can’t do that…”

“I can, and I will. I work in espionage after all, it will not be hard. Now then, will you give me what I want?” Ironside asked while keeping his threatening stare.

“Alright, alright… Err - meet me outside the Canterlot Royal Hotel after the expo and we can discuss the details in private.”

Colonel Ironside smiled and nodded. “Very good, I look forward to doing business with you,” Ironside said as he turned and left the room.

Mr Horse sighed as he sat down looking at the photo when the colonel left. “Well, that was uncomfortable, but…” He looked down at the photo of the Neural Processor. “How did he get a photo of this, it’s on my private server?”

XXXXX

Present Day.

Marejave Production Facility.

Down in the bowels of the hidden underground facility, Unit 1000 walked along the long since abandoned corridors of the now disused manufacturing and assembly portion of the facility. Back in the day this area of the facility would have been very noisy with all the automated machinery assembling the Mark 2 units. The large skeletal alicorn stepped into the area where the completed units were once loaded into their containment capsules before they were raised up into the Vault above. Unit 1000 raised its head as it sensed an incoming broadcast.

“Incoming transmission from Unit 1.”

The robot turned and left the old production section of the facility and headed for the elevator.

“Colonel, Unit 1 has an update; I am patching it through to you now.”

Up in the control room, the wireframe stallion head appeared on the large computer screen and looked over to the security camera feeds, which showed the alicorn robot now stood in an elevator.

“Excellent,” He said, his voice electronic and deep.

There was a crackle of static before a window appeared on the main screen showing the name, “Unit 1” before a feminine voice began to speak.

“Colonel, do you read us?” Unit 1 asked with doubt in its voice.

“I read you Unit 1, Unit 1000 is acting as a relay,” Colonel Ironside clarified.

“Ok good. Now I would like to report that we have managed to track I-01 to Manehattan. However, we lost track of it for a brief period of time after a large radiation spike, but we picked up its power signature again. It is heading into the Impact Crater,” The feminine machine reported. “How do you want us to proceed?”

“Wait. Manehattan, Impact Crater?” Ironside asked in surprise.

“Yes sir,” Unit 1 confirmed.

Ironside called up a pre-war map of Manehattan and then highlighted the location of where the balefire bomb had struck the city. He then placed a ring to show the area of effect from the point of impact that encompassed the majority of the northern half of the city.

“Why would the prototype be going into such a heavily irradiated environment?” Ironside asked himself as he examined the map closely. As he stared at the map and area of effect he noticed that a very specific location sat north of the point of impact and understanding suddenly dawned on him. “I know where it is going Unit 1; it is heading for Paradigm Cybernetics.”

“Why would I-01 be going there?” Unit 1 questioned.

“Hmm, I’m not sure. It does have an organic brain, and I believe its brain didn’t technically die. I wonder if its original mind and memories are intact? Perhaps it is trying to understand the situation it is in. It did come out here after all and go to New Pegasus and if my theory is right, it went to the old Fluttershy Hospital still within the city limits. If that is the case then this will work in our favour,” Ironside said with a sinister smirk.

“Shall we continue our pursuit, sir?” Unit 1 asked sounding a little unsure of what to do now.

“Of course, there is still a chance the prototype might get destroyed unless it is not recovered. Now, head to Paradigm Cybernetics, you’ll likely find it there.”

“Yes sir, right away sir,” Unit 1 said before ending the transmission.

Ironside had a dark grin on his face by the time Unit 1000 entered the control room and sat down before the large screen. “Is everything alright sir?”

“I believe so Unit 1000. If I-01 is trying to gather information on itself, then it’ll put it on a path that’ll eventually bring it here,” Colonel Ironside theorised. He looked down for a moment in thought. “Hmm, if that is the case and Units 1 and 2 fail to apprehend I-01, it will eventually make its way back here. Unit 1000, go back into the Vault and activate another Mark 2 and bring it here.”

“Affirmative!”

The large robot stood up and turned around, its glitchy holographic tail phasing through the console as the machine began to head for the Mark 2 Vault. Back inside the Vault, the machine took the first left and stepped onto the old catwalk. It walked along the wall of capsules until it came upon the third capsule marked with “Unit 3” and stopped.

Unit 1000 lifted a hoof and pressed the manual activation button on the front of the capsule to awaken the Mark 2 unit inside.

“Activation sequence engaged!” An electronic voice said as the robot inside began to wake up.

After a few minutes the capsule hissed and began to spew out steam that blew passed Unit 1000 and through the grated catwalk floor before the doors opened like a flower. Once the machine inside activated, its eyes glowed red and fell forward before it landed on its hooves in front of the larger robot.

“Unit 3 online,” The new robot announced as the support cables detached from its back, freeing it from the capsule completely.

“Greetings Unit 3, please follow me,” Unit 1000 greeted in its unnervingly motherly voice.

The new machine nodded as it fell in line with the larger robot and followed it back to the control room.

“Unit 3 is now online Colonel,” Unit 1000 said as it stood before the console with the smaller robot beside it.

“Ah good, Unit 3, I have job for you,” Colonel Ironside said as he stared down at the new machine. “I want you go out into the Marejave and infiltrate the society the best you can in preparation for the possible return of I-01.”

“Affirmative sir,” Unit 3 nodded before it turned and headed for the facility’s door.

XXXXX

We stood on the debris wall looking out over the Impact Crater. It wasn’t until now that I really took in the reality of the level of devastation the balefire bombs had actually wrought. All the buildings from the debris ring to the core showed multiple levels of destruction, from just having the tops blown off near the ring, half collapsed around the middle, or blown over and nearly flattened around the core. The actual impact sight was still clear for there was still a bright luminescent glow coming from the point of impact, and to it top off the horrible atmosphere of the Impact Crater, the skies above were a sickly yellowy green and seemed to swirl around in a circular motion like a slow-moving hurricane.

“Are you two ready to descend into Tartarus?” Quatermane asked as he ignited his jetpack thrusters.

I gulped nervously as I looked down the wall of rubble. “As ready, *gulp* as ready as I’ll ever be,” I said while spreading my wings inside the hazmat suit.

“We better get this shindig started before the sun starts going down. I don’t want to be in this shithole after dark,” Fruity said as he too spread his wings. “Faust only knows what critters a place like this has in it.”

“Alright then, let’s go,” Quartermane said and jumped off the rim of the rubble wall. His jetpack roared to life to slow his descent, but he still hit the ground with an earthshattering bang as he landed on all four hooves and cracked the pavement beneath him.

I gulped with nervousness and looked over to Fruity. “Don’t worry, I’m with you all the way,” Fruity said reassuringly. I nodded in thanks and kicked off the ledge and began to descent. Fruity jumped after me and fell beside me. We began to beat our wings as we got close to the ground to slow our fall and landed softly on our hooves.

Being on the ground felt a whole lot worse than being up on the top of the rubble wall. The buildings looked more twisted and mangled, barely any tarmac and pavement was visible under the thick layer of dust, rubble and ash. There was also a strong breeze that blew through the ruined streets, blowing radioactive dust around and making it hard to see a fair distance ahead of us. If it wasn’t for our hazmat suits or Quartermane’s armour we would be receiving lethal levels of radiation because upon reaching the ground, my PipBuck began to tick with ten rads per second.

“This used to be Downtown Manehattan. There were some businesses here but primarily this area was residential with lots of tower blocks,” Quartermane explained with a sigh. “Where we need to go is on the other side of the crater, the Manehattan Fluttershy Hospital is there and isn’t far from Paradigm Cybernetics.”

“Hang on, the bomb landed on a densely-populated area?” I asked aghast.

Quartermane didn’t respond, he simply let out a deep sigh and began to walk up the ruined street with his minigun primed and ready.

Fruity looked towards me with a pretty sombre look on his face. “That don’t sound good, like at all” He said to our guide’s silent response.

“I hope everypony managed to flee the area in time,” I said dejectedly. I knew in the pit of my synthetic stomach that not everypony would have escaped the blast but at least some had the Stables, which in of itself was a horrible thought regarding what we experienced in Stable 16. Despite remembering the horror of 16, the Stables did hold salvation for those with places. “I hope the Stable-Tec evacuation broadcast went out in time,” I added with a sigh as we began to follow after our guide.

We caught up with our power-armoured guide; his minigun’s rotary barrel was slowly rotating as if he expected an attack at any moment.

“I’d advise the pair of you to prime any available weapons you are carrying. There are creatures that reside in the Impact Crater that make a Feral Ghoul or a Raider look like a Radroach,” The armoured unicorn said as he ducked under a fallen lamppost.

“Like what?” Fruity asked as he started to hover a few hooves off the ground and cradle his modified Q-Modulator in his forehooves.

“You had to ask,” I groaned, not really wanting to know what sort of horrors lay in wait for us out there.

“Things like Radscorpions, more dangerous variants of ghouls such as the Reaver, Deathclaws and possibly an Alicorn if we get too close to the core.”

“I’m probably going to hate asking this but what’s a Deathclaw?” I asked with a whimper. My ears folded back against my head to show my nervousness inside the bubble helmet of the hazmat suit.

“Huh, oh right, sorry, Deathclaw is generally a nickname. What I mean by the name Deathclaw is a monster called a Hellhound. They were once Diamond Dogs before the bomb that have long since mutated them into hulking great beasts with massive muscular forearms and hands with huge blade-like claws that can easily cut through anything, even power armour,” We gaped at the description, especially me. “It is why some of us tend to call them Deathclaws because their claws can pretty much kill anything.”

“Well shit,” Fruity muttered quietly but it was clear he was nervous too from the tone of his voice.

“What do we do if we run into one of those things?” I shrieked feeling scared.

“Run, run fast and don’t look back,” Quartermane said with finality.

“Yep, don’t want run into one of those,” Fruity agreed as we fell into step behind our guide.

The dust made visibility really low and anything ahead of us was difficult to see as we trudged down the destroyed street. I could feel the loose ground shift beneath my hooves as I walked, feeling uneven and soft.

“The weather here sucks,” Fruity said as he hovered just above us.

“What do you mean?” I asked while keeping my eyes on the broken and cracked walls and windows of the buildings lining the street, my shotgun following where I looked in the grasp of my nano-fibre tail.

“Pegasi like us can sense the ambient magic in the air related to the weather and in this place the weather magic is all disrupted and chaotic, which I suppose is why it’s so severe and unpredictable,” Fruity explained while keeping his eyes and plasma rifle on the opposite side of the street.

I extended my wings and tried to feel for anything but was unable to feel anything out of the ordinary. “I don’t feel anything.”

“Hmm, you haven’t been a pegasus for long. I suppose I can help teach you later,” Fruity offered.

“Thanks,” I said with a light smile before a crunch up ahead caught our attention.

“Hostile ahead, be alert!” Quartermane yelled.

I gulped and steadied my lever-action shotgun as we slowly approached the hostile on our EFS. The dusty environment made it difficult to see what was ahead but we could hear something shifting the loose rubble about. After a few more cautious steps a shadow appeared in the haze and it didn’t look good.

“Shit, a Radscorpion,” Quartermane groaned and increased his minigun’s barrel rotation to firing speed.

Having grown up in the Marejave, I was no stranger to scorpions and how big they could be so I knew they were usually small creatures. However, the scorpion in front of us was anything but small. In fact it was huge, the size of a full grown stallion.

“Damn that scorpion’s been hitting the buckout,” Fruity commented when he noticed the huge insectoid.

“Don’t let it pierce your suit,” Quartermane urged before his battlesaddle minigun began to fire rapidly, sending lethal death towards the giant scorpion. When the large scorpion began to take the hits from the 5mm rounds it jerked and hissed in annoyance, it’s tough hide absorbing most of the damage, and looked in our direction. It let out a shriek before it dived forward into the ground and in a cloud of dust and a wave of its stinger tail, it disappeared.

“Where’d it go?” Fruity asked in surprise once the minigun stopped firing.

“It burrowed underground,” The armoured unicorn warned. “Be on your guard, it could pop up anywhere.”

My EFS still tracked the mutated scorpion but it still had it in front of us; and none of us could tell the whereabouts of the mutant. We kept our eyes and weapons forward, ready to open fire if the scorpion decided to show itself.

Suddenly the ground beneath my hooves began to shake and the loose dirt also began to shift, gradually becoming worse. As soon as my threat warning flashed, I immediately spread my wings and flapped them hard, propelling myself backwards just in time to avoid a pair of pincers bursting out of the ground, poised ready to snag me.

“Shit!” I squeaked as the large mutant scorpion had now fully burst out of the ground where I had just been standing and hissed angrily at us.

Fruity swooped around and fired a short burst of automatic plasma fire. The scorpion raised its large pincers to shield its head from the burning plasma balls, before it reared its tail back and tried to strike my pegasus friend out of the air with lightning fast stinger strings.

“Ahhh ah ahhh!” Fruity yelped as he dodged the stingers the best he could.

“Hey, leave my coltfriend alone!” I yelled as I ran as close as I dared to get to it and fired my shotgun. The recoil sent the weapon up and I decided to use its momentum to cock the lever and snap it back down in my grasp, ready to fire again. Unfortunately, my shotgun blast did little to no damage because the carapace was so thick. It also had gained the attention of the scorpion as it now looked at me with its tail raised up high ready to strike. “Oh crap.”

I was about ready to dart to the side when a yellow coloured magic shimmer materialised around the top half of the tail and prevented it from using its stinger.

“I’m too old for this,” Quartermane grunted, his horn ablaze with magic as he used the basic unicorn magic spell for telekinesis.

The radscorpion hissed angrily and rounded on Quartermane, but that resulted in it getting a face full of minigun bullets. The mutant shrieked and dove into the ground again, the sudden jerk making Quartermane lose his grip on its tail which quickly disappeared into the ground with a burst of dirt flying up into the air.

“Is it gone?” Fruity asked as he came to a hover over the hole.

I looked down at my EFS and sighed. It’s not over yet because the red bar was still there. “No, I think it’ll pop back up again,” I said looking around for possible clear spots it could surface. The red bar began moving all over the place on my compass which meant it was close by but because it was beneath me, it could be anywhere while still being close and unseen. Despite being unable to see it, I could feel it because shortly after it disappeared the ground beneath me began to shake again. I hunkered down ready to jump away when my threat warning appeared but when it did flash, the scorpion burst out of the ground, and rammed me bodily as it pulled itself out. I yelped in surprise, caught off guard by the sudden appearance of the scorpion. I tumbled away but thankfully before the monster could act on my defencelessness, Quartermane jumped onto the scorpion’s back. With the weight of the power armoured pony on its back the radscorpion was immediately pinned down and Quartermane quickly maneuvered so he could also hold down its tail.

“Pegasus, finish it!” Quartermane yelled as he fought to hold the scorpion down. He was unable to shoot it with his minigun because it was too close range.

Fruity swooped down and began to unload a steady stream of plasma bolts into the struggling scorpion’s face. The quick succession of plasma bolts soon superheated the thick armour of the radscorpion’s carapace and burned a hole into its head and finally killed the monstrous bug. The mutant let out a dying hiss before it fell limp on the ground with a glowing green hole in its head. Quartermane and Fruity both sighed in relief as they moved away from the dead carcass.

“Yeah, welcome to the Impact Crater,” Quatermane said again, this time full of sarcasm.

I stood back up and groaned. I was lucky I wasn’t hit by a pincer or anything sharp on that scorpion’s body. “Is everypony alright?” I asked in concern.

“Just fine,” Fruity said as he sat on his haunches and fished out a Micro-Mana Cell from his pocket so that he could reload his rifle. “Damn that thing was tough.”

“That was just a regular Radscorpion. We will want to avoid its larger and more aggressive cousins if we want to get out of this in one piece,” Quartermane grumbled. “I’m too old to fight monsters like this anymore; anyway, we should take the side streets and stay off the main road so we won’t be as open.”

I nodded, we couldn’t afford running into another hard to kill monster like that again. “Ok, lead the way.”

Quartermane nodded as he turned and began to walk towards a gap between two buildings. Fruity quickly hovered after him once he reloaded his rifle and I began to follow when I felt that creeping sensation crawling up the back of my neck again and froze.

“Crystal, are you ok?” Fruity asked as he floated back over to me once he realised I wasn’t there.

“I have that feeling of being watched again,” I whimpered and slowly turned to look back the way we came. The hazy atmosphere of the Impact Crater made it impossible to see the rubble wall through the dust despite being only a short distance inside.

“I-02 IS?” Fruity suggested with a touch of fear.

“I sure hope not,” I whimpered, dreading the idea that the terrifying machine survived the magical explosion. “Let’s get out of here.”

With a nod, Fruity turned and the pair of us flew off to catch up with Quatermane.

XXXXX

Unit’s 1 and 2 stood on the rim of the rubble wall looking down into the impact site. The robot in the lighter coloured armour gently poked at the loose rubble with her hoof to ensure it was steady before she stepped closer to the edge. Standing as close to the edge as she dared get the machine looked down into the destroyed portion of the city.

“Do you see anything?” Unit 2 asked, keeping at a safe distance from the edge.

“The environment makes visual sightings difficult to make out but I can feel I-01’s energy signature down there,” Unit 1 replied as she took a step back.

“So, what should we do, go after it or head it off to its destination?” Unit 2 asked a little unsure of what to do.

“The colonel said we should head straight to Paradigm Cybernetics,” She said as she began to closely examine the rubble.

“Um, be careful sis,” Unit 2 said in concern for its mechanical sister.

“We’re machines Buckshot, we are more durable than the average pony,” The machine said with a mixture of Razzle’s feelings for her brother surfacing.

“I know Razzle but you are my sister after all, I don’t want you to get hurt, even if you are made of metal,” Buckshot said as he joined his sister in scanning for a way down.

If Unit 1 could smile she would have at hearing the concern her brother had for her. “Don’t worry, it’ll be fine,” She said as she began to climb down the rubble wall, using her enhanced vision to pick out the sturdier ledges she could stand on. “Follow me Buckshot.”

Buckshot watched in worry as his mechanical sister began to descend. He closed in behind her and began to follow her down, but kept at a safe distance from the other robot to not disturb the rubble any more than she was.

It took a good few minutes for the two machines to navigate their way down to the ground, but when they did they both could agree they felt a lot safer. Unfortunately for the two machines, the time it took them to get down to the ground had allowed their target to get much further ahead.

“Power signature is faint now. It would be best if we head straight for the facility now instead,” Corporal Razzle said.

“Alright then, let’s go.”

With a nod the two disguised machines began to run into the haze of dust and radiation on their way to Paradigm Cybernetics.

XXXXX

The tighter side street was more cumbersome than the main road, with high piles of rubble and debris all bunched up against the walls of the buildings, lining the streets. It was made worse by the fallen lampposts and traffic lights that had toppled over either against the wall of the nearest building or into the actual street.

We had walked for a good twenty minutes without running into any more hostiles so far. During that time the haze and dust cleared momentarily when the wind suddenly stopped and became still. However that didn’t last too long before it started up again and began to kick up the dust. Fruity was right, the weather did suck and seemed to be unpredictable as well.

We turned onto a slightly wider street and the wind died down a little. The dusty haze cleared enough to let us see further down the road and at the end we could see a Barnyard Bargains store.

“Beyond that store, we’ll enter the middle range of the damage caused by the balefire bomb,” Quatermane explained.

We nodded as we followed close. As we cautiously trotted down the road, or hovered in Fruity’s case, I started to notice a growing number of red bars filling up my compass.

“Do you see those red bars on your EFS too Quartermane?” I asked shakily.

“I do. Join your friend in the air to reduce sound but be on your guard,” The armoured stallion said as he began to walk in a crouch and reduce how heavy he took his hoof steps.

I took his advice and flapped my wings to pull me up into the air to be at the same level as Fruity. I started to feel worried as we continued because the number of red bars continued to increase the closer we drew to the old discount store and we still hadn’t seen anything.

“See anything?” Fruity asked our guide quietly.

“Not yet, but judging by the numbers, I am going to say we have stumbled upon a horde of ghouls.”

“Ghouls again, shit,” My coltfriend exclaimed in annoyance. “We’ve faced enough of those cock gobblers to last us a lifetime.”

“Yeah, last time poor Xian was with us,” I agreed. I had to admit, ghouls were the wasteland creature we seemed to have run into the most.

“As long as nothing worse than a Roamer is amongst them we’ll be fine,” Quartermane assured as he triggered his minigun to begin spinning up to firing speed again. “This may not be good against armoured targets like that Radscorpion but it’ll shred unarmoured creatures like ghouls as if they are made of paper.” We certainly couldn’t argue with that.

We came to an intersection a couple of blocks away from the store when our good fortune finally ran out. Quartermane stepped on something that was hidden under the dirt and ash, and it crumbled, which in turn made him stumble. Before our guide could stop himself, he crashed into the side of a burnt-out carriage with a resounding clang that echoed throughout the ruined street, and that echo was followed by a series of hungry shrieks from inside one of the buildings ahead of us.

“Oh that can’t good,” Fruity groaned as he cradled his Q-Modulator and prepared to fire.

Ghouls began to shuffle out of a building from across the intersection, attracted by the unusual noise. There had to be dozens of them, pushing their way out of the doors and even windows.

“Take cover behind me or stay in the air!” Quartermane yelled before he began to fire his minigun and send a stream of death towards the frail ghouls. I landed behind his armoured flank and holstered my shotgun in favour of Lucky 13 for a more accurate shot and longer range. Ghouls were indeed being literally shredded by the powerful stream of bullets from the minigun as the power-armoured unicorn swept the weapon from side to side to cover all the advancing ghouls. It was a horrible sight to behold and I was glad for another reason that Xian wasn’t here as this was something I didn’t want her to witness. Ghouls were being cut in half, disembowelled, limbs chopped off, and some even had their heads exploded because of the minigun’s power.

“Just how many are there?” Fruity shouted over the roar of the minigun.

“I don’t know, there are still so many… shit their flanking,” I yelled and turned to face the buildings opposite us. More ghouls had begun to emerge from the destroyed block of flats, attracted to the sound like the others. Quartermane was still busy with the first group of ghouls which left us to deal with these ones.

“This day just keeps getting better and better,” Fruity said full of sarcasm.

“You can bitch after we’ve kicked their asses,” I snarked. I stopped and blinked for a moment at my retort. Just where the hell did that come from, that was not like me at all. A ghoul screeched which brought me back to the now. I’ll have to worry about my increasing snarkiness later until after we are safe.

“I got plenty of bitching to do about this,” Fruity said as he fired a burst of plasma bolts into the new group of ghouls.

I aimed Lucky 13 at the closest ghoul and fired. The powerful .357 round tore through the ghoul’s head and killed it instantly. Fruity and I began to trade kills, shooting one ghoul each and either killing or downing it with our shots, and covering each other when either of us had to reload our weapon. When the ghouls got close enough I switched back to the lever-action shotgun and aimed my shots for the chest to blow them back.

Suddenly the roar of the minigun went silent.

“RELOADING!” Quartermane shouted as his horn burst into a bright yellow light as he engaged his battlesaddle’s reload system.

“Cover him, I got this,” I said since the group flanking us had dwindled down to a few stragglers.

“I’ve got you,” Fruity said as he landed next to him on his hindlegs and began to fire his plasma assault rifle at the ghouls still coming on Quartermane’s side.

I blew away one more ghoul and when I checked to see what was left. I found that the flanking group had been brought down to two slow moving ghouls wearing what appeared to be remnants of equestrian military combat armour. This was the first time I’ve seen a ghoul in armour of any kind before and considering that they were still at a distance from us, I switched back to my revolver.

“Die already,” I groaned and pulled the trigger. The revolver let out a powerful bang and the bullet shot out at the target and smacked into its withered throat which did nothing but make it growl. “Damn it.” It was a little tricky to aim the mouth-operated revolver with my nano-fibre tail since I couldn’t use my mouth due to the bubble helmet, and getting a perfect aim was hard. I closed one eye, hoping I had sighted the ghoul down the iron sights right before I pulled the trigger and fired again. This time I scored a direct hit to the heart, but because the ghoul had an armoured chest piece my bullet ricocheted off the metal. Instead I hit it in the knee, and it stumbled with a pained whine. I then felt an unusual daring wave come over me. I felt brave enough to step out from behind Quartermane and approach the downed ghoul now with my shotgun and at point blank, shot it in the head. Still riding the new feeling of bravery, I dodged over the fallen bodies of the other ghouls to approach the other lumbering armoured ghoul and again did a point-blank shot to its face. I felt a sense of satisfaction as I saw its head explode like a watermelon with some of its blood splashing onto the glass of my helmet. Normally I wouldn’t take pleasure in such a thing and this had begun to bother me.

The roar of the minigun came to a stop along with the rain of ejected ammo belt pieces and shells. “Clear!” Quartermane called.

We looked around; the street was filled with corpses of ghouls that we had all killed after they had come out of the buildings. Even the street had suffered some collateral damage. The building that the ghouls were coming out of that Quartermane had covered now sported a large gash that his minigun had cut through the wall.

“Phew, thank Celes… gah!” Fruity was cut off as he was suddenly tackled out of the air and to the ground by another ghoul from out of the air. “Get your dirty hooves off me you dang dirty ghoul!” Fruity exclaimed as he fought to hold the ghoul back while it tried to snap at him. “Somepony get this damn thing off me!”

“I got you,” I assured as I dropped my revolver and ran over to him, spun around and whipped out my tail and wrapped it around the ghoul’s neck. “Get off my friend!” I screamed at it and yanked it off him. The ghoul whined and groaned as it struggled to get back on its broken hooves. While it struggled I also noticed why it could take Fruity out of the air. On its rotting torso was a pair of bony appendages that used to be wings. I’m surprised it could still fly without any feathers on them. The ghoul gargled as it managed to roll onto its side and I realised I had to act quickly before it could attack again. I grabbed my shotgun, but in my haste, I accidently grabbed it by the barrel when I pulled it off my back. “Shit,” I groaned but I had no time to correct my mistake because the ghoul had managed to get onto its cracked and broken hooves. So, I decided to use the shotgun like a club and swung it around, smashing the handle of the weapon onto the pegasus ghoul’s head with was a resounding crunch. The ghoul let out one last groan before it collapsed to the floor dead.

“Thank the goddesses for that,” Fruity sighed as he got back up and flapped his wings to shake off the ash and dirt from his suit.

“Yeah,” I agreed, cringing as I wiped the ghoul blood off my shotgun.

“Are you two ok?” Quartermane asked.

“Yeah, that ghoul surprised me,” Fruity said with a sigh of relief now that there were no more ghouls.

“Sorry about that. Didn’t count on a pegasus ghoul,” The armoured unicorn apologised.

“It’s fine mate, no harm done.”

I smiled at that as I trotted over to where I dropped Lucky 13 and picked it back up and holstered it. Once all three of us were ready again, we continued down the road to the Barnyard Bargains store. Fruity and I returned to hovering just above and behind Quartermane while he walked cautiously. At least this time our EFS was now clear.

The entrance of the discount store looked intact, but a good portion of the rest of the building looked like it may have collapsed inside; a tall building had fallen over onto it. The building that had collapsed blocked off the street to the right. The building’s top couple of floors lay almost intact and vertical with the roof facing the street we were in.

“Wait a minute,” Fruity said as he drifted over to the collapsed roof towards a pile of twisted equipment and clumps of metal.

“Hey hang on, wait for me,” I said as I fluttered after him.

“Don’t take too long you two,” Quartermane said while he was looking up at the sky. “I think a Radstorm is brewing.”

“Aww what, shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!” Fruity groaned as we hovered high enough to clear the twisted guard rail. There was a pile of twisted metal heaps resting up against the rail, almost ready to fall through at any moment. As Fruity descended down towards the mess, I noticed a couple of terminal shaped clouds among the mess along with what looked like a collapsed table.

“What is all this?” I asked just as the wind began to pick up.

Fruity landed on the metal piles and used his wings to clear some of the dirt before suddenly bolting back into the air with a shocked look on his face.

“What is it?” I asked my friend as a nervous feeling came over me from his reaction to the metal heaps.

“Those were Enclave soldiers,” He said as he looked over the ruined roof now with understanding. “This is, or was an Enclave Research outpost. The metal lumps there were the soldiers. Their power armour is all locked up and their long dead. I can’t see the bodies of the researchers, probably long lost by now. This is puzzling; I didn’t realize they were sending research teams down to the surface, especially into a place like this. What the hell happened to them?”

“The building fell over, isn’t that cause enough?” I replied.

“Nah, look. Can’t you see those gouge marks all over the place?” He asked while he pointed to several deep gashes that were cut into the floor and through the roof extractors with a wing.

“Oh, err… I dunno… but whatever made those I don’t want to meet it,” I said nervously before a strong gust of wind blew passed us that made me falter in the air, followed by a boom of that unnatural thunder. “We better go,” I urged as I turned around and flew over to the entrance to the old store to meet back up with Quartermane.

“Right behind you.”

We quickly flew to the store and pushed our way through the broken doors, just as the strong winds began to blow a gale and lash the damaged store with radioactive rain.

Barnyard Bargains certainly had seen better days. Where the tall building had fallen upon it, the roof had caved in, totally demolishing those sections of the store on the left and right. The central area had weathered the collapse, but by the look of the bends in the steel support beams and the cracks in the roof, it might not hold for that much longer.

“We need to exit out of the roof at the back,” Quartermane explained as he began to lead us through the collapsed store.

It confused me as to why we had to leave through the roof but I didn’t question him as we navigated around a couple of the aisles. We had to climb over shelves that had fallen over, along with their contents all over the floor. It made things tricky but when we managed to make our way into the middle of the store, the answer became clear. Where there had once been windows were now large mounds of debris up to the top of the windows. At the back of the store that led all the way up to the roof, which had partially collapsed leaving a big enough hole, was a mountain of debris, dirt and ash that stretched all the way up and over the back wall and back out into the Impact Crater.

“We’ll wait here until this radstorm is over,” Our guide said as he watched the storm rage through the hole in the roof.

“Someone needs to call Filthy Rich and tell him there’s a leak,” Fruity joked since the heavy rain from the storm was falling like a waterfall through the large hole.

I had to chuckle at that. Despite the situation we were in it was good to be able to laugh at something. To pass the time I decided to have a little look around of what was left of the store. Sadly there wasn’t much left on the shelves (that were still upright) that were remotely salvageable. I did however, come across a sealed box that contained a stuffed toy of Princess Celestia in the foals section. I smiled as I picked up the box, weathered and old but the contents still looked fresh and it would make a nice present for Xian. She does deserve a little something for my neglect of leaving her behind, twice. With my mind made up I picked up the boxed toy and pocketed it, just in time to hear the wind and rain to come to a stop, leaving deathly silence in its place.

“Why is it so quiet?” I asked with a gulp as I returned to the group.

“The storm has passed, the weather can change just like that out here,” Quartermane said before he began to ascend the hill.

Fruity and I were about to follow him when the store rocked and shook suddenly.

“The hell was that, an earthquake?” Fruity asked while the old store continued to groan and creak under the stress.

“No, worse, come on, we need to move quickly,” Quartermane urged.

“You know what that was?” I asked as we followed after him.

“I do, and it’s something we don’t want to attract the attention of.”

Fruity and I shared a look of worry and we both gulped as we remembered what he told us about something that resided in here. If he’s urging us to move like this, it must be something like this Hellhound thing he said we should just run away from.

Quartermane stopped once we got to the top of the hill and looked back to us. “What you are about to see, I urge you not to touch them. So please show some respect,” He said before he continued on.

I was about to ask what he meant until we walked out from the roof and began down the debris hill on the other side and back into the street behind the store. When we left the store, the street was still hazy with thick dust but as we descended, the haze cleared and so did the skies, allowing a spot of sunlight to light up this section of the street, although the radioactivity in the atmosphere tinted the sky green and the sun a sickly yellowy green. With the haze gone and the sun shining down, I gasped in shock and disbelief at what filled the street. Statues, statues made of ash and they were all in a state of running for their lives trying to escape from something.

“By the maker, what is this?” I choked out, horrified by the scene before us.

“This Crystal, is what happens when you drop a bomb on a civilian population and don’t alert the populace of the impending doom until it’s too late,” Quartermane sighed dejectedly. “These poor souls were the lucky ones, the unlucky ones turned into ghouls but still, being flash burned is a horrible way to go.”

I can’t believe all this. All these ponies dead and worse, forever petrified in a state of terror. How could the zebras do this, how heartless must they have been to kill so many innocent ponies? I felt angry at them for this, for destroying so many innocents over the dumb war.

“Mind your step, don’t disturb them,” Quartermane reminded us as we began to slowly weave through the ash statues. “I’d rather you not fly over them; your down drafts might destabilise them.”

“I doubt that if they’ve weathered the chaotic weather of this place,” Fruity said as he took care to not touch any of the petrified ponies.

“Maybe, but they’ve been here since the day the Impact Crater was formed, and a foreign element like your downdrafts could push them over the edge,” Our guide countered.

“Alright dude, keep your helmet on,” Fruity relented.

I hugged my wings tightly to my body so I could make myself as thin as possible while I weaved through the ash statues. I felt sick as I cautiously moved through them. It was horrible to see so many, especially when you could tell what they were doing in their last moments. Most were just frozen running for dear life but there was some that were not. There was one pony that was turned so their body was opposite to the others, and beside it was what looked more like a lump of rock amongst the ash and dirt, but upon closer inspection turned out to be a smaller or young pony crouching down and shielding its head. It looked like a parent had attempted to shield their foal from the coming fire. Not even foals were safe from the fires of balefire.

“H-how many are there?” I asked shakily.

“You don’t want to know,” Quartermane sighed quietly.

“Damn!” Fruity exclaimed.

I was blown away at that myself because that could mean there are countless ash statues in this middle section of the Impact Crater. “So many,” I breathed out sadly as I passed a recessed doorway and stopped and felt my heart clench. A family had hoped to find shelter in the doorway; a mother and a father had huddled together around their foal in the middle but the fire had not even spared them. I sniffed and mentally cursed the bubble helmet as I could feel a tear trickle out the corner of my eye and down my cheek. With a sniff, I turned away from the sorrowful and heart-breaking scene and continued down the street while dodging more statues.

The clear sky soon clouded back over and the dusty haze settled back over us but, we were now so close to the core that we could see a bright luminescent green glow ahead of us. I also began to see a change in the buildings we passed while dodging the ash statues. The once vertical buildings were now starting to lean away from the middle of the impact site, and the tops of the buildings were getting shorter and shorter. We must be getting close.

“What is this?” Fruity gasped when we came to a gap between two tower blocks or what was left of them.

“Oh my Celestia,” I gaped when I saw what Fruity had seen. In between the buildings was a small playground surrounded by a short fence and where the fence wasn’t broken and twisted. There were several ash statues with their heads down. Inside the playground where more ash statues, foals petrified in various states of play apart from a couple that had turned and looked in the direction of the bomb blast. Oh, this was a heart-breaking sight. It would appear in the little time the ponies were given to evacuate, these parents decided to give their foals one last carefree playtime before the end happened.

The ground suddenly shuddered beneath our hooves, and all the ash statues in and around the playground exploded into dust as they collapsed.

“Holy sweet goddess, what the fuck!” Fruity shrieked as he witnessed the horrific sight.

I had screamed inside my helmet too when I saw the statues turn to dust.

“We need to move, we need to move NOW!” Quartermane urged with a hint of fear in his voice.

Fruity and I quickly followed after him. We felt a little fearful of what could be lurking in around us, especially considering the recent earthquakes. We dodged and weaved the statues until they thinned out and the buildings grew steeper in their angles until they were nearly flat. Eventually we came out into the core, the area mostly flat. The buildings around the point of impact had all been blown flat to the ground and in the very centre was the luminescent green glow. The radiation around this area was so high now that if we were to take our helmets off we’d likely die from radiation poisoning within a matter of minutes.

“Alright, let’s hurry,” Quartermane said before the ground shuddered again.

The ground in front of us began to bulge up before it exploded outward and sprayed us in dirt, ash and small chunks of fallen buildings.

“What bloody hell is that?” Fruity yelped in surprise.

“Emergence hole,” Quartermane gulped. “You two, run, get to Paradigm Cybernetics now, before it…” He was cut off when a deep powerful roar from within the hole blasted out.

“What in Celestia’s name was that?” I squeaked with wide eyes as I stared at the hole in the ground.

“Hellhound,” Quartermane breathed out quietly as two large bone-clawed hands rose out of the hole and grasped the rim before a large, wide and heavily muscled torso began to rise out of the hole. The torso also had two massive muscular and long arms connected to those large bone-clawed hands as they continued to pull itself out of the hole. The creature’s head wasn’t big but it resembled a canine to some degree with pointed ears but it lacked lips, giving it a permanent snarl. It also didn’t have a nose. It had two holes more like that of a skull, and on the top of its head it sported two horn-like protrusions that curled around to the front of its head that certainly gave it the dog-from-hell look. Soon it was out of the hole, standing on its relatively short but strong looking legs and behind it, a long thin but bony tail stretched out behind it and swished in the radioactive air. The monster threw its long powerful arms open, bone-claw fingers outstretched, and it roared again hungrily.

“No wonder you call these things Deathclaws,” Fruity said while he began to fearfully back up.

“Yes,” Quartermane affirmed as he began to spin up his minigun again.

The monster leaned down, raised its claws as if ready to charge at us when suddenly there was a small fleshy explosion on the back of the creature’s head.

“The hell?” I asked out of confusion from the strange turn of events.

The Hellhound growled in annoyance from the hit to its head and it turned to look in the direction the shot came from. It growled as it looked for its mysterious attacker when one of its eyes suddenly exploded in a wet pop, which was followed shortly after by a distant echo of a gunshot. The monster’s growl stopped short before its arms dropped down to its sides and collapsed onto its knees, falling flat onto its face dead.

“What just happened?” Fruity asked.

“I dunno, but I don’t feel safe,” I said shakily while backing away.

“That’s it, we run. We are not alone out here,” Quartermane ordered.

We nodded and as one we turned tail and began to run in the direction of Paradigm Cybernetics.

XXXXX

Nexus watched through the scope of the crude makeshift sniper rifle as his fatal shot blew out the Hellhound’s eye, punched into its brain, and ended the abomination’s life. If he could he would have let out a sigh of relief, but he did however feel a sense of satisfaction wash over him. Despite the fact ensuring I-01’s survival was part of his original secondary objective, saving her from certain death now free from Ironside’s control felt right to him, like it felt good to save another when they needed help.

He watched as the creature fell to the ground dead, and the three ponies he’d been following from afar quickly broke away from the scene, heading back into the destroyed cityscape of the Impact Crater. He knew where they were going, but after being cut off from the Production Facility he couldn’t get the exact coordinates. He pulled the .308 calibre pipe rifle away from his eye as he examined the core. He had to make a quick dash over open ground to reach the same side the small group was now on. However, he still had to deal with the wasteland creatures that would decide to get in his way.

“Things have changed so quickly, but I feel free despite everything,” Nexus said to himself as he prepared to make his run over the open ground of the core.

Just as he was about to run the ground beneath his armour clad robotic hooves began to shake. He looked down in confusion to the shaking until he remembered the Hellhound attack on the group earlier and he quickly jumped away. The ground erupted just as the burnt armoured robot jumped to safety. When Nexus turned back around to face his adversary he found that another Hellhound had emerged from the hole, but this one was slightly smaller, lacked horns and still seemed to have a nose and fur.

“You kill brother metal pony,” It growled while it pointed a bone claw at the infiltrator.

Nexus tilted his head. He did not expect the Hellhound to be able to vocalise words.

“You die now metal pony,” The Hellhound sneered as it began to charge at the robot.

Nexus quickly holstered his pipe rifle and then grabbed his 12-gauge Auto-Shotgun with his nano-fibre tail. He quickly aimed the weapon and targeted the open palm of the hand that was raised to strike him, and began to fire powerful 12-gauge buckshot into the soft flesh of the hand in quick succession. The monster howled in pain as buckshot shredded its hand apart from its claws, and it stopped its charge to nurse its wounded hand.

“Please do not interfere,” Nexus said coldly as he levelled the shotgun to the Hellhound’s face and fired a single shell. The buckshot tore into the creature’s flesh but not enough to kill it. However, the buckshot found its eyes and Nexus noted that he had blinded the monster by destroying both eyes.

“My eyes, my eyes!” It howled in agony and began to roll around in pain with an arm draped across its bloodied eye sockets. Nexus stared at the creature with his glowing red eyes with pity for a moment before he used this as his opportunity to make his escape and ran for the other side of the Impact Crater.

XXXXX

We didn’t slow down after our encounter with the Hellhound. We couldn’t afford to run into another deadly creature like that, and we didn’t know who or what killed it. For all we knew we could be in grave danger by whatever killed that Hellhound and I believed we were, considering my feeling of being watched earlier. If I-02 IS was still active and had followed us here, then things would turn sour fast.

We had to dodge more ash statues as we pushed through more of the destroyed cityscape in the crater towards Paradigm Cybernetics. It was difficult to not disturb them but thankfully, we were able to avoid destroying any. We did run into another Radscorpion, but we just ran and it eventually decided it wanted to fight another scorpion that was nearby.

Eventually, after about half an hour of running and winding our way through the streets and statues, we arrived at our destination: Paradigm Cybernetics.

“Is that it?” I asked in surprise while staring at the pretty ordinary looking clinic-like building, despite all the debris built up around the walls and covered the front doors, meaning we weren’t getting in through the ground level.

“What did you expect?” Quartermane asked as he examined the rubble.

“I dunno, I sorta had this image of an evil lair in my head,” I replied.

“Doesn’t look sinister to me,” Fruity said as he stood next to me. “So, how do we get in?”

“Like how we got out of Barnyard Bargains. We get in through the roof,” The armoured stallion explained.

“Oh, is that all?” Fruity asked as he flapped his wings and took off.

“Fruity wait!” I cried out.

“We better go after him, there is no telling what’s up there,” Quartermane said as activated his jetpack thrusters.

“Holy balls!” We heard Fruity shout out from the roof. I quickly flapped my wings and jumped up into the air and climbed quickly, fearing my coltfriend had run into something bad. I heard the roar of Quartermane’s jetpack beneath me as we flew up, and I bit my lip nervously as I hoped we weren’t too late to help my friend. As we crested the rim of the roof, I let out a sigh of relief when I saw that Fruity was just fine and not in danger, but instead he was staring at a suit of rusty power armour.

“Don’t scare me like that,” I chided with a pout as I came down for a landing. I misjudged my distance from my position in the air and the roof, so when I stuck my hind legs out to hit the ground first, I overbalanced and stumbled which resulted in me falling over and onto my chest. “Ooffff!”

I felt hooves wrap around my barrel and began to pull me up. “Are you ok?” Fruity asked with a little strain in his voice as he tried to help pull me back up. I realised that my levitation talismans were offline now that I was down, which meant Fruity was trying to pull my full weight up, so I quickly picked myself up.

“Err yeah… um, still not used to landing,” I said with embarrassment.

“Can’t believe my magic was given to an idiot,” That voice in the back of my head mumbled to itself.

“Heh, you’ll get there eventually,” He reassured.

A shuddering bang signalled the arrival of Quartermane after he cut off his thrusters once he got over the rim of the roof. “Is everything ok up here?” He asked once he landed.

“Huh, oh yea, everything’s just fine. In fact, I found a suit of power armour,” Fruity said with a big grin on his face as he walked over to the large suit of armour. “Surprising thing about this suit is that it’s a pegasus power armour. See those folds there?” He pointed to a set of folded metal strips on the side next to the shoulder where there was also a large enough hole for a wing to fit through. “Those are the wing guards.”

“Wait, if that’s a pegasus suit, doesn’t that make it Enclave?” I asked.

“No, there was a pegasus power armour variant built in the later stages of the Great War. Doesn’t have the strength of Mark 1 Steel Ranger armour but it was made with lighter materials such as carbon fibre. They were first introduced for the Shadowbolts… I think,” Quartermane explained.

“He’s right,” Fruity confirmed. “This is a PX-01 with fully enclosed helmet. The Enclave have since improved their power armour designs and now use PX-02 and 03 suits,” Fruity reared up and leaned on the rusty armour and peered over onto its back. “Sadly, this suit looks to be out of juice. Probably why it’s still here.”

“And I don’t have a spare Mana-Core to give you,” Quartermane added.

“Bollocks,” The purple pegasus sighed before he perked back up again. “Oh well, it would have been awesome to have had this suit but you can’t have everything.”

“I suppose it’s a good thing we can’t take it back with us. I mean just by looking at it, it looks like it’ll require a lot of maintenance,” I said while scrunching up my nose in distain at the level of rust coating the suit.

Fruity looked over the old pegasus suit of power armour before he sighed. “I suppose you’re right.”

That creeping feeling began to make its way up my neck again which made me shiver. I turned around to look back the way we came. Since we were a couple stories above ground level now, I had a good vantage point and could see a good distance into the ruins of the crater, but the radioactive haze still made things difficult to make out. I hated this feeling of being watched. It made me feel paranoid and I feared that I-02 IS was still alive despite how close to that explosion he was. I could feel my heart rate pick up with my nerves, especially when I spotted two pairs of red lights in the distance. The lights made me think of them as eyes, just like the red glowing eyes of I-02 IS had or what I used to have.

“We need to get inside, like now,” I urged with a shaky voice.

The two stallions both agreed without argument, and we quickly pushed through the roof access door and descend the stairs. I had to activate my talismans to reduce my weight as they began to creak and groan as soon as we began to go down them. I doubted they would be able to handle the weight of both me and the power armoured stallion. We followed the stairs down all the way to the ground floor and when we pushed our way out of the door at the bottom, we found ourselves in the main lobby of the building, albeit at the back and in an out-of-the-way corner.

“Whoa,” Fruity and I both said in unison as we walked out into the main lobby and looked at the many display cases that lined the walls on either side of the entrance area that led up to the reception desk. Inside the intact/broken display cases were examples of prosthetic limbs or parts of them.

“This is certainly not what I expected to find,” I said quietly to him while I took in the friendly waiting room despite all the debris that had poured in through the large glass windows and doors at the front of the building. It was a complete mess, but despite that and the horrible weather outside it retained some of its original features. On the walls, I could see the remnants of posters that detailed surgeries, and they all seemed to have ponies with smiling faces on. Well the ones that were still intact that was.

“Are we in the right place?” Fruity asked while he examined a poster closely.

“Yes, this is Paradigm Cybernetics,” Quartermane said before he pointed out the obvious: a large three dimensional sign above the reception desk that held the name of the building.

“Oh. Well um, it’s just that this faded poster says this place was approved by the Ministry of Peace,” Fruity said confused.

“And why is that important?” Quartermane queried.

That caught my interest too. “Because the Ministry of Awesome were responsible for me,” I answered.

“Huh, that is interesting, so, how do you want to go about searching this place?”

Fruity and I froze and we looked at each other. “I dunno, how should we search this place. I don’t know where to start?”

Fruity took a quick look around the reception area, and then out of the high windows that were not obscured by debris to see the churning radioactive weather before he looked back at me. “Well, I think we need to search this place as quick as possible,” He then looked over to a set of stairs on either side of the reception desk that led up to a second floor with a plaque that read “Offices and Rehabilitation Rooms” on it. “Hmm, this might be a bad idea out here but I think we should split up. We can cover more ground that way and hopefully one of us might find something.”

“He has a point. You two take the second floor. I’ll take the back storerooms and workshops on the ground floor here,” Quartermane said. “If I find anything down here I’ll contact you on your Pipbuck’s broadcaster.”

“Alright, I suppose that works. If we find anything I’ll do the same, and since Fruity and I will be on the same floor we can just yell to each other,” I said to which Fruity nodded in agreement.

“Alright,” Quartermane said before he turned around and began to trudge towards the back of the old clinic building.

Fruity and I took one set of stairs each and walked up them to the second floor. At the top of the stairs there was a sign that pointed us either to the offices or the rehabilitation rooms. “I’ll take the Rehab rooms,” Fruity announced from the top of the other stairwell.

“Guess I got offices then,” I called back.

“To be on the safe side let’s meet back here in ten minutes if we don’t find anything, ok?” Fruity suggested.

“Ok,” I agreed.

“Alright, ten minutes. Stay alert,” He said before he turned to his right and began down the corridor.

I nodded and waved a wing before turning left and walking up the hallway. The doors to several of the offices looked to have been blown off their hinges, mainly on the side of the building that faced the bomb blast, and the doors opposite looked broken and blown inwards. As I passed each office I peeked inside to check them out. The offices looked like the doctor appointment offices I used to go to when I was still flesh and blood and suffering from my several illnesses. They had the examination table in one corner next to a desk with the doctor’s terminal on it, which was beside the window that was shattered. There were also several cabinets for either medicines, filing purposes or examination tools while the doctor checked out the patient. Sadly, each office I passed looked pretty much the same: a complete and utter mess with mounds of dirt coating nearly all surfaces, wires dangling down from the ceiling, papers everywhere, and in some of the offices, there were bones slumped in the desk chairs or on the examination table. I wasn’t going to find anything in these offices, so I continued onwards towards the end of the corridor.

At the end of the corridor, it opened a little more and there was a small secretary’s desk in front of a door to another office. The desk had a thick layer of dust on it but there was a name plate visible above the dirt that read as “Ivory Scroll”.

“Ivory Scroll, I’ve heard that name before,” I said to myself out loud.

There was a buzz and then a flicker of white light from the top corner next to the door before a hologram of a mare with a stylish mane, wearing thin rimmed glasses and a collar with a bowtie materialised before me.

“Whaa!” I shrieked.

“W…w…w…w…w…w…welcome to…to…to…to…to Parad…d…d…digm Cybernetics,” The hologram greeted in a monotone electronic voice. The hologram flickered and buzzed each time it stuttered. “My n…n…name is EVA, h…h…h…h…h…h…h…how may I…I…I…I…I…I…I…I help you?”

“Um, I’m just looking for something,” I said, totally unsure of what to say or do in the presence of this hologram.

“Do you h…h…h…have an app…p…p…p…pointment?” The hologram asked.

“Um, yes,” I quickly answered hoping that might help.

The hologram leaned closer to me and its eyes began to glow. “Identifying,” I said as it began to scan me.

“Um,” I gulped nervously.

The hologram suddenly turned red. “Identity confirmed. I-01…” And then the hologram began to flicker and buzz rapidly before it then just disappeared with an electronic pop from the top corner. I gulped nervously and waited for something bad to happen, but after a good couple of minutes of nothing I let out a sigh of relief. I also felt confident I was on the right path since the hologram had identified me.

“Fruity!” I yelled loudly down the hallway. The bubble helmet slightly muffled my shout as I turned around to face the corridor.

“Celestia damn it, son of a bitch,” Fruity cursed from down the hall, and his yell was followed by a clatter and a few smashes of glass. He stumbled out of a room from down the hall and used a wing to brush some shards off his white environmental suit as he made his way up to me. “You scared me half to death just then,” He whined.

“Sorry,” I blushed.

“I had my head in a cupboard when you shouted. Anyway, did you find something?”

“I did. A hologram appeared when I got here to this desk,” I said while I gestured to the desk with a wing and then explained my encounter with the damaged hologram and how it identified me as I-01.

“Well if anything that confirms we are on the right track,” Fruity said “And maybe the answers you seek are in that office.”

“I hope so,” I said and skirted around the desk and walked up to the closed door that was still intact. I tried the door knob but the door didn’t budge. “Locked,” I groaned. I then concentrated to put more strength in my legs and shoulder-barged the door. The old lock and weathered wood broke apart with ease, giving us access to the office.

“Whoa, careful. You don’t want to damage your suit or owt now.”

“Sorry,” I said while fluttering my wings to get rid of some rotten wood debris from my back before gawking at the office. It was pretty much like the others although minus the examination table, slightly larger and was a mess. But what surprised me the most was how empty the office looked. The shelves were bare, the filing cabinets were open and empty, which to me gave the impression this office had been cleared out. “Someone’s been here before us,” I grumbled.

“This does look weird,” Fruity affirmed as he walked into the spacious but empty office. “The door was locked and there is nothing here.”

“Let’s check the computer.”

“Good idea.”

We quickly ran over to the hardwood desk. Its draws were pulled open and empty like the filing cabinets and shelves. To my great relief, we found the Stable-Tec manufactured terminal coated in grime but still functional. I pressed the power button and after a few seconds of it booting up we were met with a screen we’ve seen before.

“All data transferred to Marejave Production Facility.”

“Where have we seen this before?” Fruity asked in surprise.

“The MoA Hub,” I gasped, “Ironside’s office.”

“Mmhmmh, this looks very suspect.”

Something then suddenly clicked after I read the message on the screen again. “Wait a minute, that means that everything I need to know is back over in the Marejave somewhere,” I cried out in annoyance. “This is taking the fucking piss. We get dragged out to the most horrific environment on the planet and it still gives me nothing. I feel like the goddesses don’t want me to know the truth and are just making me run around in circles for the hell of it,” I grumbled angrily.

“Whoa easy there Crys, calm down,” Fruity gently rubbed at my shoulder soothingly.

“I’m sorry, that just really ticked me off.”

“I know,” He said softly.

“Crystal, do you read?” Quartermane’s voice crackled out from my PipBuck’s broadcaster, which gave me a little jump to which I bumped the desk and caused something to fall over.

“I… I read you Quartermane, did you find something?” I asked as calmed down from my little fright.

“Did you do something up there, because a wall opened up and revealed a hidden door with a security terminal next to it that also has the Ministry of Awesome insignia on it.”

Fruity and I exchange a look.

“We’ll be right down,” I told him as we both turned to leave to the office. It was then that I noticed a name plaque on the desk that had fallen over. The name read “Dr Pear Shape”, but as soon as I saw that name a flash of memory crossed my mind of a unicorn mare with a mane done up into a bun looking down at me, but I couldn’t picture any colours from the memory apart from red. The memory only lasted for a moment before it faded and left me back in the office alone.

“Crystal, you ok?” Fruity asked as he popped his head back through the door.

“Um yeah, I err… just got distracted,” I replied, unsure of what to make of the flash of memory before I quickly followed the pegasus, and together we made our way back down to the ground floor, using my EFS to navigate the back workshops and storage rooms to find Quartermane where he stood beside the revealed secret door.

“So, did you two find something to make this appear?” He asked and gestured to the revealed door as we approached.

“I don’t think so but…” I then went on and told him my encounter with the malfunctioning hologram and what we found in the cleared-out office which was pretty much nothing.

“Interesting, sounds like this Ironside guy had something to hide,” The armoured unicorn mused.

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Fruity nodded.

“Did you find anything before you found this?” I asked as I stepped up to the sealed door.

“Nothing along the lines of what you are looking for but I did find a brochure that explained the purpose of this place,” Quartermane began.

“Oh really, does it explain the creepy robot pieces in the lobby?” Fruity interrupted.

“Actually it does. You see this place was a clinic meant to restore the lives of ponies that had suffered from certain types of paralysis and lost limbs. It seemed that this place was set up to help those unfortunate ponies and to give them back their normal lives by restoring what was lost to them. They would first come here for an appointment to assess the level of treatment they would need and later be fitted with a cybernetic implant or limb, to which they would need to come back here to use the rehabilitation rooms to learn how to use their new limb again or the cybernetic implant.”

I looked down at myself. “Anything on a full body recreation?” I queried.

“No, nothing that extreme and I don’t think Fluttershy would have approved of this place if it did go to that extreme either,”

I nodded, still surprised of that fact. “Ok, well perhaps there maybe something useful to us behind this door,” I said as I examined it. The terminal had a card reader as well as a retinal scanner that were needed to gain entry. “Looks like we need a keycard and a prewar eyeball,” I grumbled.

“What about your mother’s ID card, it got us into that upgrade station,” Fruity suggested.

I bristled at the mention of the upgrade station but bit my lip and took a deep breath to calm myself down. “Good idea Fruity,” I sighed and reached into my pocket with my wing to retrieve my mother’s MoA card. I didn’t know if this would work but we didn’t have many options available to us. I swiped the card into the card reader and it beeped and flashed green.

“*Beep… beep…* Administrative security override engaged, opening workshop door.”

With several loud clunks the door locks released and the thick security door slid open to reveal a staircase that led down into the basement of the building. “Thank you mum.”

“Wow that’s some security clearance, it even overrode the retinal scan,” Fruity exclaimed as we peered down the dark stairwell. Suddenly there was a bright light that flashed on behind us which made Fruity and I jump in fright and we whirled around as we expected a threat, but instead we found that Quartermane had just turned on his helmet’s headlamp.

“Don’t scare me like that,” I whined with a pout.

“Sorry,” The armoured unicorn said quickly.

After we quickly recovered from our brief scare, we began down the stairs while aided by Quartermane’s light. Just as we all had entered the stairwell, the steel door slowly swung shut and sealed us in as its locks reengaged with a series of loud echoey thuds.

“Shit, it just locked us in,” Fruity yelled out nervously as he looked back behind us.

“I think I know why,” Quartermane said while he directed his light around the walls of the stairwell and at regular intervals there were a column of nozzles on both sides all the way down.

“What are these?” I asked with a nervous gulp, scared that we had just walked into a trap.

I heard Quartermane inhale like he was about to say something when suddenly the nozzles began to unleash a jet of mist upon us.

“Ah, what is this?” I shrieked and tried fruitlessly to avoid the spray.

“Don’t worry, it’s just a decontamination spray. You’ll be fine,” Quartermane assured.

I sighed with relief with his assurance and when I noticed that my PipBuck had also stopped ticking. Huh, when did it stop ticking? Was it when the door closed? I’m not sure but it seemed that in here with the door closed we are not exposed to the Impact Crater’s radiation anymore.

The spray lasted for a good minute before it died down and left us as clean as a whistle. “Decontamination, Complete,” EVA’s voice spoke out from somewhere at the bottom of the stairwell just as door at the bottom began to open.

We descended the rest of the stairs and stepped out into a fairly decent-sized workshop/lab that was lit up by the still-working ceiling lights. It looked remarkably clean, as if there was no deterioration at all, apart from a couple of points where the supports had collapsed and some shelves or racking that had fallen over; likely from the bomb explosion.

“This looks well preserved,” Quartermane commented as we properly entered the basement workshop.

“And radiation free,” I cheered.

“It is?” Fruity asked in surprise. “Thank Faust for that, it’s getting stuffy as fuck in this suit,” He whined as he quickly sat on his haunches and grabbed his helmet.

My eyes widened in alarm as I realised what my friend was about to do. “Fruity wait!” I shrieked.

With a hiss and a pop, my coltfriend twisted his helmet slightly and it came off his suit. He let out a deep breath. “Ohhh that feels better,” He cooed while he began to fan himself with his wing.

“Is… is it safe?” I gulped in worry.

“Yes, the air is safe to breath, just stale,” Quartermane confirmed.

With a little hesitation, I too removed my bubble helmet and felt the cool air wash over my fur and into my suit through the gap in my neck. I shivered but sighed softly at the soothing coolness of the air. I didn’t realise how hot I was getting inside this suit. “Oh, you are right Fruity. This is better,” I smiled.

After our little break, we began to look around the workshop. It too looked to have been cleared out but there were still items and unfinished products lying around. It was disheartening to find so little in the drawers and boxes that had no connection to me. But there was one thing that made my heart freeze when we found it. It was an incomplete endoskeleton. All there was of it was a head minus eyes and a jaw, neck, and torso with a wide-open chest cavity and one foreleg. Inscribed on its left eyebrow was its model number, “I-01 Unit 2”. This endoskeleton was going to be the one that came after me it would have seemed. While we were examining the endoskeleton, we were surprised to find a post-it note stuck to the side of its head, and to my surprise, it was meant for me because it had, “Crystal,” with an arrow pointing to a seam that ran the circumference of the robotic skull.

“Looks like you gotta open its head,” Fruity said nonchalantly.

“Are you crazy, what if there is a brain in there?” I squeaked.

“I don’t smell owt bad and if there was, it would have long since rotted away by now.”

“If something pops out on me and scares me, I’m gonna smack you,” I whined and slowly reached up to the top of the incomplete endoskeletal head. Just as I began to lift the top of the skull, Fruity leaned in close to my ear and yelled “Boo” which scared me half to death and made me jump into the air with a frightened squeal.

“HAHAHA!” Fruity laughed as he rolled onto his back and kicked his legs.

“Fruity you asshole,” I squealed in embarrassment as I fluttered back down to the floor.

“I’m… haha… I’m sorry Crystal I… I couldn’t resist,” He wheezed as he got back up.

I puffed out my cheeks in annoyance and gently cuffed him around the back of the head with a forehoof.

“Ow. Worth it,” He snickered.

I grumbled while I went back to removing the top of the skull. This time, without Fruity’s interference, I was able to remove the lid of the skull, and to my surprise, there was a holotape hidden inside the metal skull.

“What did you find?” Quartermane asked from beside a desk with another Stable-Tec terminal on it, displaying the same message as the one from Dr Pear’s office.

“It’s… um, it’s a holotape,” I said in confusion and turned it around in my hoof to get a good look at the small square disk. It didn’t look anything special but where you would generally label it, it simply said, “Play Me!”

“Play it, let’s see what it has on it,” Fruity urged.

I nodded and tapped the back of my PipBuck to open the holodisk player and then slipped it in. Once I pushed the tray back down, I pressed the play button beside the screen. Immediately sound began to crackle out of my PipBuck’s speaker.

The sound of a heavy door was heard being locked before a feminine voice began to speak. “EVA, security override…” There was some static to hide the override code, “Disable all internal monitoring systems. I don’t want Colonel Ironside to hear or see this.”

Internal monitoring disabled Dr Pear,” Replied EVA

Ok good, I need to make this quick. I don’t have much time before I need to meet Ironside at Tenpony Tower for evacuation,” The mare, Dr Pear, cleared her throat. “I didn’t want to leave without saying something to you Crystal. I know it doesn’t mean much now, but if I had known at the time that you were not a volunteer I would not have accepted the proposal for Project Infiltrator by Colonel Ironside,” There was a big sigh from Dr Pear. “I wish I could have turned back the clock and refused, but by the time I found out the truth it was already too late; I had already put your brain inside the endoskeleton of I-01. One of the reasons I had accepted the job was because it would help me develop a way to restore full body paralysis, but with you, I decided I would try to restore you as closely as possible given the resources Ironside made available, along with Starlight Industries’ funding of Paradigm Cybernetics. It may have pissed off Ironside that I was taking so long with you, but it was purely because I was trying to restore you as closely as I could make you given the circumstances, along with making you the Infiltrator Ironside wanted. If you survive the bombs and find this, please know that I am truly and whole-heartedly sorry for this and I hope you can forgive me,” Dr Pear let out a deep sad breath.

Excuse me, Doctor. Your transport has arrived,” Interrupted a new feminine voice.

Ah, thank you Miss Scroll,” Dr Pear thanked. “You can take the rest of the week off.”

Oh thank you,” Ivory Scroll said cheerfully. “I’ve been meaning to visit my family in Ponyville lately,” She said but it faded out as she had walked away.

Let’s hope you are still there when the time comes,” Dr Pear sighed. “Ok EVA, end recording, eject the tape and then transfer the data like he ordered.”

“Yea ma’am” And with that, the holotape went silent.

I was stunned to silence by what I had just heard, but inside I felt the fires of rage begin to burn inside me. Not only was I manipulated and tricked by Colonel Ironside, but so was Dr Pear. He made her believe I was a volunteer for this project, but she found out after it became too late to do or say anything, and I assumed he would have also had a contingency if she wanted out as well. I felt angry, but despite what had been done to me, my anger was not directed to Dr Pear who had turned me into this; but instead to Ironside because I held him solely responsible for my situation.

“Damn dude, that’s deep,” Fruity breathed out lowly.

“Looks like Ironside was manipulating everypony,” Quartermane observed from Dr Pear’s desk.

“He certainly manipulated me,” I grumbled. “But how are we supposed to find the Production Facility?”

Quartermane stood by the desk with a deep drawer open. “Hang on, this drawer has a false bottom,” The armoured unicorn said before his horn glowed yellow with his magical aura and he lifted out the loose panel. “Huh, it looks like Dr Pear didn’t want everything to be taken. Looks like her ledger is still here,” He said as he then picked out a thick black covered book and set it down on the desk.

Fruity and I quickly gathered around the desk as Quartermane opened the book for us. The first couple of pages detailed Dr Pear’s early years while she was in college studying robotics, so I reached out with a hoof and turned many of the pages with entries towards the end until we were at the last few entries.

“Well, this is odd,” I said as I scanned the nicely written text on the pages. “There doesn’t seem to be many entries after she began working on Project Infiltrator,” It was pretty clear from the near daily entries until the day she wrote down she had accepted the proposal, to which the entries then became once or twice a week and were very brief.

“What are we looking for?” Fruity asked.

“Anything. Anything that could give us a clue,” I whined.

“How about this?” Quartermane said as he used his magic to highlight a passage on a page before the last.

I leaned close and read out loud the entry that was dated for three years after the project had started. “I got a phone call this morning from the Colonel; he wanted to talk to me in private. He’s never asked to meet me in private before. He wants me to go to his private residence in Pondale. 7 Crescent Road, Steeple District, Pondale for future reference if I’m ever asked to go again. It must be very important if he wants to discuss something there at his house.”

“Hmm, the private household might be a good place to find information. He could have hidden things within his house that he wanted to keep off the Ministry Network,” Quartermane suggested.

“Hmm, being the head of the Ministry of Awesome’s Espionage Department, I wouldn’t be surprised if he hid his dirty little secrets there,” Fruity commented.

“Well, I guess his place is our next destination,” I groaned, annoyed that we had to go somewhere else.

“Alright let’s get out of here.”

I nodded in agreement. We’ve been in the Impact Crater long enough and the hellish landscape is certainly trying on my nerves and emotions, especially with the Ash Statues.

“Alright ponies, if there is nothing else, let’s head back,” Quartermane said as he walked around the desk and over to the open door to the stairs. Fruity and I put our helmets back on and followed behind him as we began to ascend the stairs. In a similar way as earlier, once we were all inside the door to the workshop closed and sealed before the door to the clinic opened. As soon as the door to the clinic unsealed and began to open, my PipBuck’s geiger counter began to scream with lethal levels of radiation again.

“Don’t worry, we’ll be out of this soon,” Quartermane began as he stepped out of the stairwell and back into the clinic’s ground floor. “It should take us an hour if we… argh!” He suddenly cried in pain, his cry was also followed by the crunch of glass and the sound of sheering metal before he disappeared from the top of the stairs.

“Quartermane!” I yelled in alarm.

“We better get up there,” Fruity urged and with no further encouragement we ran up the rest of the stairs. I gasped when I saw our power armoured friend on the floor, his helmet was dented and cracked, and the glass lense over his right eye was broken.

“Oh no! His helmet’s broken, he’ll be exposed to the radiation!” I exclaimed in shock.

“Shit, what did this,” Fruity growled out angrily as he looked around but it was difficult to see much as this portion of the clinic was shrouded in deep shadows.

Suddenly, two red lights appeared in a shadow in front of where Quartermane lay on his side, and a pony began to step out of the shadow. The pony was wearing black combat boots while its legs and body were covered in an old military jumpsuit with light-coloured combat armour segments on its legs and torso, two SMGs strapped to its forelegs. The pony stepped forward closer to Quartmane, its head coming out of the shadow and my heart stopped.

“Oh Celestia no,” I squeaked in horror. What stood before us was another robot-like I-02 IS, but not him because I could see its model number on its left eyebrow: “I-02 Unit 1”.

“Crystal get down!” Fruity shouted as he quickly drew his plasma rifle, but was caught off guard by a shotgun blast from another shadow to our right. The blast wasn’t aimed at Fruity but actually aimed at his weapon, the buckshot impacting it, and on instinct, he dropped his weapon and cried out in shock surprise. “Holy shit!” But then his face fell when the Q-Modulator began to fizz and spark. “It’s gonna blow,” He then quickly kicked the gun away before it exploded in a shower of bright green plasma sparks. “No, my Q-Modulator,” He whined in distress.

“Enemies disarmed,” A male voice said before another similarly dressed robot but with darker green armour pieces stepped out of the shadow to join the other one. This one had “I-02 Unit 2” on its left eye brow.

“Not yet,” Unit 1 said in an authoritative voice before she used her forelegs to grab the unconscious power armoured unicorn’s minigun, and with a show of great mechanical strength, pulled it off his battlesaddle with a metallic snap and then threw it away. “Now they are disarmed, and I doubt I-01 will bother using that shotgun of hers on us,” I could just imagine the two machines smirking if they had skin like me. “It’s not like that 20-gauge will even affect us.”

“Now, will you come quietly or do we have to rough you up?” Unit 2 asked while he pointed his shotgun armed battlesaddle at us.

I was a little confused by the way these machines acted and sounded. They sounded like normal ponies, but they acted more efficiently than I-02 IS did when we first ran into him. They disarmed us right away and with there being two of them, I couldn’t fight them, especially with both armed like they are.

“Who the fuck are you two?” Fruity asked as he flared his wings.

The two robots looked at each other for a moment before they then looked back to us. “I suppose we can humour you,” The female sounding robot said. “My name is Razzle and this is my brother Buckshot, and we are Mark 2 Infiltrators sent to retrieve you, I-01.”

My eyes widened in surprise. I didn’t expect that the two machines would have named themselves nor call each other brother and sister like this. Was there more to this or have these two developed that bond themselves?

“If I go with you, I’ll die,” I cried.

“Does it really matter I-01. You are artificial and an old model. It would be better for us all if you come quietly, otherwise we may have to threaten something precious to you,” Razzle said as she nodded to her brother who then pointed his twin shotguns at Fruity.

“No please!” I shrieked and pushed myself up against Fruity’s side.

“Come with us and nothing will happen to him,” Razzle said in a serious tone.

I didn’t know what to do. I could go with them and save him from being used or harmed by them, but then again, they could still just kill him if I agree to go with them. I feared for my coltfriend. I didn’t want him to get hurt but what can we do?

Suddenly, there was a light breakage of glass from down at the other end of the corridor, and then something smacked into the tiled floor between the two robots, leaving a small hole in the floor.

“What the shit!” Buckshot cried and whirled around as he scanned the corridor for a threat.

“Damn it, the rogue element is here,” Razzle said with a growl as she too turned around to look for the source of the disturbance.

“Crystal, let’s buck while they’re distracted,” Fruity whispered into my ear quietly.

With a beat of our wings, we shot off down the corridor in the opposite direction and quickly turned to go up another corridor so we could make our way towards the lobby.

“What about Quartermane?” I panted as we burst through the doors and skidded across the dirty floor.

“I dunno. We will come back for him when we’ve lost them,” Fruity said quickly while we looked around for the door for the roof access.

“Oh no!” I squeaked in distress when we found the roof access door blocked by metal frames that had once been the waiting room seating.

“Shhhhhhiiiiiiiit!” Fruity groaned in annoyance.

“You didn’t think we would leave a way for you to escape so easily now did you?” Buckshot asked smugly.

We quickly turned around to find the two robots stood there behind us.

“Bollocks, bollocks, bollocks!” Fruity groaned with a quiver in his voice.

“Enough running around,” Razzle said in a no-nonsense voice and then turned to her brother. “Kill the male flying rat.”

Fruity bristled. “What did you call me?”

“Sure thing sis,” Buckshot said as he took aim at Fruity to which my friend audibly gulped with wide eyes.

“NO!” I screamed in terror of losing my friend and quickly put myself in front of him and spread my wings wide as if to shield him.

“Fuck!” Buckshot whined and dropped to his haunches so his shotgun’s trajectory was aimed high and they both fired, sending their twenty and twelve-gauge buckshot into the wall above us.

“Gutsy move I-01,” Razzle said as she stood beside Buckshot.

“Thank you Crys, I-I dunno what we can do now though, we’re stuck,” Fruity whispered sadly.

“What can we do?” I replied just as quietly but in a defeated tone.

Suddenly, Quartermane appeared behind the two machines and then wrapped his forelegs around the necks of the two machines, his forelegs threading between their forelegs. He then put his body on their backs and pushed his hindlegs in between theirs to reduce their movement, holding them still before there was a loud metallic clung as his armour locked up.

“I got…” He coughed wetly into his broken helmet. “…I got them, go, now…” The poor unicorn again coughed and sounded like he hacked up a lung. “…ugh, go, while you can,” He wheezed.

“Quartermane, what about you?” I squeaked in surprise.

“I… ugh… I won’t make it, *gulp* I’ve been…” He had another coughing fit. “I’ve been exposed to too much radiation,” He groaned.

“I can’t move. He has his leg is between my hindlegs and he’s restricting my movement too much,” Buckshot groaned.

“I can’t move either,” Confirmed Razzle.

Quartermane’s horn glowed brightly for a moment before a key with a glowing orange Sparkle Cola bottle keyring appeared in front of Fruity. “Take it, use it to…” He stopped for a moment while he heaved like he was going to be sick. “Use it to get into my safe house and, ugh, and take anything you want, as thanks.”

“Aww dude,” Fruity frowned sadly as he took the key.

A small hatch opened on the back of Quartermane’s power armour and his Mana-Core extended out. “Go, while you can. I’ve set my Mana-Core to detonate,” He wheezed.

“We need to get out of here,” Fruity gasped and quickly began to look around for a way out.

“We’re stuck in here,” I cried helplessly.

The large windows at the front of the clinic that were not obscured by debris suddenly shattered before two small impacts hit the wall near us. The breakage of the windows gave us our way out.

“I don’t know what’s going on but it just gave us our escape route. C’mon let’s get outta here,” Fruity urged as he fanned out his wings. I nodded and got ready to fly.

I looked back to Quartermane. “I’m so, so sorry,” I apologised with a teary sniff as a tear dripped down my cheek.

“Don’t… apologise, I had *cough* I had one last grand adventure and for that,” He was cut off as he hacked and wheezed wetly for a minute. “Ugh, and for that, ugh, I thank you two, now go, get out of here while you still can.”

“You crazy suicidal asshole,” Buckshot shouted angrily as he struggled to get free.

“Thank you for everything Quartermane. We’ll tell Silver everything,” Fruity told him solemnly as he tugged on my foreleg.

“Tell him I had a blast,” He wheezed despite the mirth in the eye I could see through the broken visor. He then looked to me. “Look after that kid of yours, she’s *cough* she’s a good kid.”

“I will,” I said with a nod but had to cringe at his bad pun for was about to happen.

We nodded sadly and gave our last sad farewell, before we quickly jumped into the air and flew out the broken windows and into the churning skies of the Impact Crater.

“Fuck taking the safe way, we need to get the fuck out of here ASAP! We need to fly hard and fly fast,” Fruity shouted over the harsh wind.

I nodded as I felt the familiar buzz inside me as my pegasi magic kicked into full swing as it aided my flight. I then stopped in mid-air and turned around to face Paradigm Cybernetics. I couldn’t explain it but I felt something like an energy pulse or something back there, but at that moment the front section of the building exploded in a huge mushroom cloud of destruction.

“QUARTERMANE!” I screamed in anguish as I watched the explosion obliterated the front of the building.

“Aww shit. Rest in peace mate,” Fruity sighed sadly. “C’mon, we should head back.”

I nodded and sniffed as tears began to trickle down my cheeks. “Thank you for everything,” I said quietly for our fallen companion before I followed Fruity.

XXXXX

Quartermane smiled as he watched the two pegasi in their white radsuits fly out of the broken window and to safety.

“Now it’s… just us,” He groaned.

“You crazy motherfucker!” Buckshot cursed as he wiggled in an attempt to get free.

“You crazy old fool, you’ve killed us all,” Razzle angrily growled. “And you let our target get away!”

“It won’t be… long now” Quartermane grunted.

“Fuck this,” Buckshot growled as there was a loud clunk and then a thud as he released his 12-gauge shotgun, landing on the floor. He then grabbed the shotgun with his nano-fibre tail and shoved the muzzle of the shotgun into Quartermane’s armpit; and began to unload the powerful buckshot at point plank range. The ill and armoured unicorn grunted as the machine began to blast away. After several point-blank shots, the armour cracked and shattered, making it easy for the machine to unload the rest of his ammo into the weaker frame of the armour and then into his shoulder.

“Argh!” Quartermane cried in agony as his armour broke around his shoulder from the 12-gauge as it chewed through his shoulder and separated his leg from his body, freeing Unit 2.

“Haha yes! Now for you sis,” He quickly scrabbled to free his sister but she grabbed him with her forelegs and with what movement she had shoved him away. “Sister?” He asked in confused surprise.

“You know as much as I do that there isn’t enough time. You can feel that power build up,” She said sadly as she looked at her sibling robot. “Get out of here, save yourself.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Buckshot dropped his shotgun as he sat before the locked-up unicorn and his trapped sister. “I love you sis, I don’t want to lose you.”

There was a bright pulse from the back of Quartermane’s armour before there was a powerful pressure wave strong enough to pick Buckshot off the floor and throw him across the room, slamming him into the wall; which also collapsed and fell on top of him, burying him under a massive pile of concrete and steel. The pulse was shortly followed by a tremendous explosion that annihilated the power armoured unicorn and consumed his prisoner.

*6 Hours Later*

A large pile of rubble shifted in what remained of the lobby of Paradigm Cybernetics. There was another shift before a yell came from under the pile and Buckshot burst up out of the rubble.

“What, err, how long was I…?” He trailed off as he took in his surroundings. “Damn that emergency reboot… Oh my Celestia, RAZZLE!” He screamed as he quickly ran over to the spot he last saw her to which was now a small crater. “Oh no, oh no, where are you?” He panicked. “Think, think, AH!” He closed his eyes and concentrated for her energy signature and to his great relief he picked it up to his left and quickly ran over to a small pile of rubble, hurriedly pulling it apart to uncover his sister, or what was left of her. “Oh shit,” He gasped in despair as he saw her. She had been blown in half as well as lost her forelegs, and there was a third of her head missing, including an eye and to his horror her energy level was dropping fast. He sat on his haunches and cradled her head and hugged it to his still armoured chest. “Oh sister, speak to me,” He whimpered.

“You… you survived,” Razzle said quietly, her voice very electronic and fuzzy.

“I-I got buried, it-it must have protected me,” He said sadly as he could see the red glow in his sister’s still intact eye growing dimmer.

“You always did have the best luck,” She said. If she had skin she would have smiled. An automated message sounded from Razzle. “Warning, warning, power level critical!” She looked into her brother’s eyes with her dimming intact one. “I’m sorry for the times I’ve been hard on you. Just know I was only doing it to help you and because I love you brother,” She said in a terrified voice before the light in her eye went out completely and she went still as her powercell ran dry.

“Sister… SISTER!” He cried loudly as he gently shook her still form before he yelled out in anguish as his sister died in his hooves.

XXXXX

The flight back to the Tenpenny was harrowing. What made the flight worse was the horrible feeling that filled our hearts of the loss of our friend. We landed outside on the balcony of Silver Disk’s penthouse suite which started the old unicorn DJ.

“Jumping Luna on a pogo stick where the fuck did you two come from?” He yelped when we burst through the glass doors.

We quickly scrabbled out of our radiation suits and looked to the grey unicorn with sad eyes.

“Silver, I’m so, so sorry, Quartermane, he… he didn’t make it,” I told him with a snotty sniffle.

“He’s dead?” Silver asked with his ears pinned back.

“Yeah, I’m sorry dude. He died protecting us,” Fruity replied as he rested his wing on my back.

“We got ambushed by robots like me,” I explained with a sad sigh. “And they were after me too.”

“Well, at least he had one last adventure. Something he wanted to do before he went,” Silver said with a sad smile.

“Where is Xian?” I asked tiredly. It was then I noticed that my power levels were pretty low. About twenty five percent for my primary powercell, and fifty for my secondary because of all the flying I’ve done recently.

“She’s upstairs in my bed.”

“Do you mind if I take your bed for tonight?” I asked hopeful.

“Sure. Go to her.”

Fruity walked over to Silver and then rested a wing over his shoulder. “Dude, your old mate was a badass.”

I smiled as Fruity began regale Silver with our expedition to Paradigm Cybernetics. I then gulped nervously as I picked up my radsuit and began to climb the stairs to Silver’s bedroom above his broadcasting station. I smiled when I saw the young black striped zebra filly fast asleep on the bed. I quietly put the suit on the floor and dug my head into the pocket I put the toy in and then pulled it out. I cringed when the box crinkled loudly when I tried to open it.

“Silver?” Xian asked groggily as she poked her head up.

I smiled weakly as I waved a wing with the box of the plushie in my mouth.

“CRYSTAL!” She screamed happily and rushed out of the bed to tackle hug me, which made me grunt and drop the box.

“Oof! Nice to see you too Xian,” I smiled and hugged her back softly.

“Please don’t leave me again,” She sobbed with tears glistening in her eyes.

I remembered Quartermane’s last words to me. “I won’t sweetie, I promise,” I told her honestly and to seal the promise, I kissed her on the forehead.

Chapter 15: Broken Steel

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Fallout Equestria: Influx

Chapter 15: Broken Steel


Dark storm clouds swirled high above the desolate cityscape of downtown Manehattan. Thunder crackled and lightning lit up the heavens, casting the ruins in bright light. Rain came down in a heavy downpour that left the city in a thick haze. The storm left a Steel Ranger and a Field Scribe grumbling in annoyance, as they stood at the top of the destroyed suspension bridge-support tower that made up their base of operations: Bucklyn Cross.

“Why does it always rain when I’m on sentry duty?” The Power Armoured Ranger complained as he was pelted by rain.

A unicorn stallion in Field Scribe attire turned his head to the bulky armoured stallion standing beside him. “What the fuck are you complaining about? You are inside a tin can, and all I got is this shit ass umbrella?” The scribe yelled over the storm at his companion, all the while desperately clinging to a large umbrella that threatened to collapse at any moment from the wind.

The scribe heard the Ranger take a breath to make a retort, when suddenly there was a bright flash from the northern sector of the city, which was then swiftly followed by a mushroom cloud.

The scribe snatched up his binoculars with his magic and focused on the growing cloud in the distance.

“What do you see?” The Ranger asked, now at attention.

The scribe zoomed in as close as he could to the now dissipating mushroom cloud. “Looks like... a Spark Battery or a… um a Mana-Core explosion, so that would make it a class five detonation.”

“We better call this in.”

“Agreed.”

The Ranger lifted a bulky metal hoof to his helmeted ear and pressed his hoof against his helmet. “Star Paladin Cross, we’ve seen what we believe to be a class five detonation in the northern area of the ruins,” The Ranger declared before he nodded from a reply and then lowered his hoof and grumbled. “Uh… he said thank you for the information and to keep up the good work.”

“Great. If I catch a cold, I’m giving it to all of you tin cans,” The scribe moaned.

XXXXX

“A class five detonation has been seen up north by our lookouts on the suspension tower,” Star Paladin Cross announced, his decorated Mark 3 Steel Ranger armour shifting as he turned to a pair of scribes working at a bank of monitoring stations. “Did you detect such a detonation?”

One of the scribes turned to her commanding officer. “We did sir. It certainly was a class five and we were able to identify that the explosion did to belong to a Mana-Core. Specifically, a Stroke C Mana-Core.”

“A Stroke C. That is the same type that powers our armour, is it not?” Cross asked as he eyed the scribe.

“That is right Sir,” The scribe confirmed.

“Jaffa Cake!” Cross called out as he approached a situation map, a pre-war holographic map table set in the middle of the command room.

“Aye sir!” A stallion on the opposite side of the room answered.

“Do we have any patrols in the northern sectors?” Cross asked as he peered at the illuminated map on the table.

“Negative sir. All current patrols are within the southern and eastern regions of the city,” Knight Jaffa Cake called back from his station.

“Hmm, then who was up there?” The Star Paladin asked himself as he stared at the map.

“Sir, I might have something here,” Another scribe called from her terminal.

“What you got Harley?”

“I was replaying the detonation to pinpoint the exact location but while doing that, I discovered something,” The scribe paused as she double checked her data. “A Steel Ranger EFS tag appeared for a split second before the explosion?”

“What, who was out there?” Demanded the Star Paladin.

“I don’t know sir. I didn’t recognise the tag,” Scribe Harley paused while she looked at her screen to check the tag again. “Um, the tag was ‘SR-357’.”

The decorated Paladin’s eyes widened in surprise. “357. I’ll be damned, that’s Star Paladin Starhorn’s tag!”

“Pardon sir?”

“Star Paladin Starhorn. She and her recon squad went missing over five years ago within the Manehattan Ruins. We found the bodies and destroyed armour of her squad, but we never found her or her armour, and we could never pick up her tag either,” Cross looked down at the situation map. “Where did you locate the point of detonation Scribe Harley?”

Scribe Harley got up from her terminal and approached the table. She looked over the full city map before using the table’s console to change the map. Cross watched as the map flickered and zoomed in with each change of the settings. His eye’s widened when the large red zone that indicated the Impact Crater filled the screen of the map.

“The point of detonation originated from here sir.” She reached over the table and tapped a spot on the map directly above a building in the north-eastern area of the red zone. “Paradigm Cybernetics.”

“That is all the way inside the Impact Crater! What on Equus was she doing in there, if at all it was her?” He asked himself. “We don’t normally go into those areas because they pose too much of a risk and are not worth the trouble, but this needs to be investigated.” Cross leaned back from the map and pressed his hoof to his ear, activating a small black ear piece. “Paladin Shortbread, I want you and four of your best Knights to report to the Command Room immediately.”

Within a few minutes, a bulkhead door slammed open at the back of the room. The impact of the door against the concrete wall made Scribe Harley jump and whirl around just in time to see five power-armoured ponies squeeze through the door and enter the room. The first armoured pony to enter wore a suit of Mark 2 Steel Ranger armour that was painted with Paladin markings, while the other four wore Mark 2 armour of plain colour.

The Paladin approached the table and stood to attention. “Paladin Shortbread reporting for duty sir!”

“Very good. I have a mission for you Paladin,” The Paladin nodded and stepped forward. “Moments ago, there was an explosion in the north of the city and thanks to Scribe Harley here,” Scribe Harley gave a nervous smile, a little intimidated with five Steel Rangers surrounding her. “We have been able to identify the explosion coordinates and discover that Star Paladin Starhorn’s armour tag appeared at the point of the detonation. Your mission is to enter the Impact Crater, locate the source of the explosion at Paradigm Cybernetics, and discover what happened… hmm. If possible, recover anything important.”

“Understood sir.”

“Very good Paladin Shortbread, dismissed.”

The Paladin nodded and stepped away before he addressed his Knights.

“Alright ponies. We are heading into some pretty dangerous territory. Report to the armoury and select heavy weapon battlesaddles,” Shortbread commanded.

“Sir yes sir!” The four Knights chanted together before they turned around and then left the command room, soon followed by their Paladin.

Soon all five of the Rangers were kitted out with heavy weapon gear. Their gear ranged from minigun battlesadles, to missile launcher saddles, grenade launcher saddles or a combination of the different heavy weapons. Shortbread double checked his minigun and grenade launcher saddle before he turned to his armed Knights.

“Is everypony geared up?”

“Affirmative sir,” One of his Knights confirmed. The rest nodded in agreement.

“Excellent. Move out!”

The five power-armoured ponies left the Barracks portion of their base, located on the deck of what remained of the Bucklyn Bridge’s Manehattan tower, and marched up to the edge of the road deck where a lift waited for them. Piling onto the lift, two at a time, the Rangers descended to the ground to begin their mission.

XXXXX

Night was quickly falling upon the city, and it felt even darker in the radiation-heavy environment of the Impact Crater. However, the dark environment was constantly being lit up by flashes of light and bangs from a group of armoured ponies trudging through the ruins, deeper into the chaos.

K’boom!

K’boom!

“No wonder we don’t go into these Red Zones,” One of the Knights complained after they blew away a mutated creature with a pair of missiles. “It’s crawling with abominations.”

“Easy Knight Sour Cream,” Paladin Shortbread sighed before he turned to the Knight beside him. “Knight Caramel, how much further to our target?”

Knight Caramel lifted her armoured left foreleg. The armour had a built-in PipBuck that allowed her to view a map without it using his helmet’s EFS, which would have otherwise blocked his view. She peered at the PipBuck for a moment before looking up at the building shrouded in the sickly green haze of the Impact Crater that was in front of them.

“Directly ahead of us sir,” Knight Caramel indicated as she pointed his bright headlamp at the ruined exterior of the south wall of Paradigm Cybernetics.

“Alright Rangers, let’s move out,” Shortbread called as he began to lead his Rangers towards the half-destroyed building.

The five Rangers began to skirt around the walls with large mounds of debris built up against them. As they rounded the corner to the west wall, they froze when they saw the giant hole in the side of the building. The hole nearly stretched from the south wall to the north wall, and the hole in the roof extended almost halfway back to the middle of the building.

“So the same type of Mana-Core we have in our backs did this?” One Knight cried out in disbelief.

“They are like Spark Batteries, liable to exploding just like that if they get destabilised,” Paladin Shortbread informed as he stared up at the massive hole in the roof. Even some of its steel support beams had been bent upward due to the force of the blast.

A couple of the Knights looked back behind them to see the release wheel where their Mana-Core was plugged into their suit, with a new feeling of nervous apprehension for the portable bomb-like power unit.

“Alright, you two,” Shortbread pointed at the two Knights that were looking back at their power units. “Guard the entrance here. Don’t let anything get passed you.”

The two Knights snapped to attention. “Sir yes sir!”

“The rest of you,” He said as he turned to address the other two Knights. “Fan out and search the area.”

After giving their acknowledgement to his orders, the remaining Knights split up and began to walk into the destroyed lobby of Paradigm Cybernetics. Paladin Shortbread approached the crater in the middle of the ruined lobby while the other two Knights began to explore the perimeter of the room. The Paladin stood at the rim of the crater and peered inside. As he looked for any signs of a struggle, any traces of Star Paladin Starhorn, he noticed some disturbed earth and drag marks in the dirt near the centre of the crater.

“Paladin, I’m seeing small pieces that could belong to power armour scattered around here,” Knight Sour Cream said over his comm link. “But the shards are too small and broken to positively identify.”

“Keep searching. We need something definitive,” Paladin Shortbread replied as he directed his headlamp down to the tracks and began to follow them.

“Sir, there is a door back here that leads down into a basement,” Knight, Caramel informed through her comms. She had left the ruined lobby and walked down a corridor until she found the open door.

“Proceed with caution,” The Paladin replied as he followed the tracks to a corner where there was a rather large mound of dirt that looked like it was freshly disturbed. The area around the mound also looked to have lots of hoof prints too, like somepony had treaded the ground recently.

Paladin Shortbread looked up when he heard the heavy thuds of armoured hooves approach him from behind. He turned his head to see one of the two Knights he tasked with searching the area approach him while walking on three legs. Held in a raised hoof was a portion of a helmet.

“Sir, I found this. It is clearly part of a Mark 1 Helmet,” Knight Sour Cream said as he held up the broken portion of the helmet. “There is an indentation on the cheek area of what is left of it that is bent inwards, which suggests that Star Paladin Starhorn had been hit pretty hard in the head out here. A physical blow strong enough to dent the armour would have shattered the visor and allowed the radiation of this red zone into her suit.”

Shortbread scowled as he looked at the portion of the helmet, disappointed and saddened that they were unable to recover the Star Paladin; which he suspected, considering she had been missing for five years. “Good work, but what would have made her, if it was her in the armour, initiate the self-destruct function?”

“SIR!” Knight Caramel screamed down in her comm link which made all three Knights and the Paladin cringe. “YOU BETTER COME SEE THIS!”

“Celestia almighty, don’t scream down your comm link, you nearly burst my eardrum!” He scolded.

“I’m sorry,” She quickly apologised.

“I’ll be right down,” He then turned to Sour Cream. “Continue exploring the area, see if you can dig up anything else.”

“Yes sir!” He saluted and continued his search.

Shortbread gave the mound of dirt one last look before he hurried off to Knight Caramel’s location. He found her inside the basement workshop and was surprised by the robotic elements that were still in it, but what truly caught his attention was what Knight Caramel was standing next to.

“What is that?” He asked as his bright headlamp illuminated the incomplete robot.

“I don’t know. It’s clearly some kind of robot. We have to bring this back for our scribes to examine.”

“Agreed,” Paladin Shortbread nodded as he began to heave the incomplete robot onto his back. Thankfully his power armour could take its weight.

“I’m going to do a quick sweep of the area. Maybe there is some documentation in the desk there,” Caramel said as she approached the desk.

“Paladin Shortbread, we need leave soon. There is a lot of movement out here,” One of the Knights assigned to guarding the entrance informed through their comms.

“Roger that, we won’t be long.”

“Whoever was working here didn’t want anypony knowing about what they were working on. The terminal says that all data has been transferred to some place in the Marejave, and all the drawers were empty,” Caramel complained.

“Right well, let’s just get out of here. It seems the mutated abominations of this red zone aren’t taking kindly to our presence here.”

The two power-armoured ponies left the basement workshop and returned the destroyed lobby, just in time to find Knight Sour Cream digging up the mound of dirt Paladin Shortbread found earlier.

“What the fuck is this?” He exclaimed as he unearthed a destroyed skeletal robot not so dissimilar to the one on the Paladin’s back.

“Another one. We gotta take that back too. That looked like it was complete considering its complete chest piece and head,” Caramel said as she looked at the robot in the dirt.

“Yeah? But it looks like it got blown to hell,” Knight Sour Cream pointed out.

“Take it and let’s go.”

“Yes sir,” Sour Cream said before grumbling in his helmet about having to pick up heavy useless junk.

Suddenly both Knights guarding the entrance opened fire with their miniguns. They fired a hail of bullets out into the night, their continuous muzzle flashes lighting up the area as they shot at a number of twisted mutations.

“Everypony engage,” Paladin Shortbread ordered as he stood in the middle between the two firing Knights and began to fire grenades from his grenade launcher.

Upon the detonation of the grenades, whatever the two minigun-armed Knights were firing at jumped away with a shriek from the bright flash of the blast.

“What in Celestia’s cake stash was that?” One of the Knights shrieked upon seeing one of the strange creatures jump away.

The Paladin transferred the robot that was recovered from the basement to Knight Caramel’s back so it wouldn’t hamper his performance.

“I have no idea. I didn’t get a good enough look,” Paladin Shortbread said feeling slightly nervous now. “Alright ponies. Form up,” He commanded. The four Knights gathered around their Paladin. “Alright, we need to get the packages back to base as soon as possible,” He then pointed his hoof to the two Knights that acted as guards. “You two and I need to protect them at all cost. I’ll take point.”

There was a chorus of “Yes sirs” as the Paladin and Knights got ready to leave.

“Alright, headlamps on full bright, and we’ll move at a brisk pace to try and to avoid any of the predators. Now let’s move out!”

After another chorus of “Yes sirs”, the group of Rangers began to quickly trot away from the ruins of Paradigm Cybernetics. As the group entered the ruined streets, there was a heavy thud high above the retreating group.

“The fuck was that?” Sour Cream asked as he looked up to the building the thud came from. Despite the bright headlamp light, it didn’t reveal anything.

“Stay alert and keep moving!” Paladin Shortbread called out at the front of the group.

High above the group, a pony-sized creature crept to edge of the ruined building it had leapt onto and peered down at the group, growling with irritation. It swished its thick tail, rubbing a spot where a bullet had managed to strike against its softer inner thigh. Suddenly, another of the same type of creature leapt onto the roof of the opposite building and growled lowly, to which the creature replied with its own growl before it peered back down at the moving group. It planted its large hind feet on the edge of the building and jumped.

“We’re being followed,” One of the Knights flanking called out.

“I can hear them, but I can’t see them,” Paladin Shortbread said, looking up at the buildings every time there was a thud on the top of the buildings, or the breaking of masonry.

“We can’t shoot what we can’t see,” Knight Sour Cream complained.

“There is a clearing up ahead before the crater wall,” Knight Caramel said with a pant.

“Keep your weapons at the ready everypony,” The Paladin ordered as they broke out from the ruined buildings, and began to trudge across the empty space before the crater wall.

“INCOMING!” A Knight screamed.

“What?” Shortbread gasped as he looked back, just in time to see a large creature with its legs spread in a pounce, heading right for him. “Oh shit!” Paladin Shortbread jumped to the right in the nick of time as a creature that would almost match a regular pony in size crashed into the ground with a heavy thud. The group of Rangers stopped immediately and were surprised that the creature had landed on its feet, considering its impressive jump.

“What the fuck is that thing?” Sour Cream gaped.

“I don’t know, but it kinda looks like some sort of mutated frog or toad,” Caramel squeaked.

“Whatever it is, it’s ugly as fuck,” Paladin Shortbread remarked quietly.

The creature growled as it turned around to face its adversaries. It stood on four legs, its front legs short and stumpy, making its front half low to the ground; but its hind legs, long, thick with muscle and having large feet which were perfect for jumping. The creature’s hide was covered in thick scales from its head, all along its back and up its thick tail, which it raised high above itself where it fanned out at the end with six bony quills that were webbed in between. The creature’s head was relatively small but it had a mouth that contained rows of sharp teeth, and when it roared it sounded more like a deep sounding screech, revealing multiple tongues and a split jaw.

Upon seeing all its tongues Caramel shrieked in terror at the sight of the monster. “Oh sweet Celestia!”

“Open fire!” The Paladin ordered but as soon as the miniguns spun to speed ready to fire, the creature jumped away directly over them.

“Holy shit that thing can jump!”

“Alright, it’s obvious we are being stalked by whatever that is,” Paladin Shortbread then turned to Sour Cream and Caramel. “You two, I want you two to make a break for the crater’s debris wall and return to base. We will cover your retreat.”

“But sir-” Sour Cream began to protest but Shortbread cut him off.

“I gave you an order Knight, now get moving!”

Knight Sour Cream snapped to attention. “Sir, yes sir!” He yelled.

Suddenly, the creature landed hard in the middle of the group making them all back up to give the creature some space. “Fuck!” One of the Knights yelped in surprise.

“GO… NOW!” Paladin Shortbread screamed as he turned his attention to the creature.

One of the Knights with a minigun and missile launcher battlesaddle was too slow to react to the creature and therefore unprepared for its tail. The monster had closed its quills together to form a singular point and with a flick of its muscular tail, it slashed the throat of the unprepared Knight. Despite the Knight’s efforts, he could not avoid the strike and the quills tore through his neck armour and scratched his neck. The Knight was now unfortunately exposed to the highly irradiated atmosphere of the Impact Crater.

“Shit,” Shortbread cursed as he saw one of his Knights suffer a crippling blow. The other minigun wielding Knight began to open fire. The small 5mm rounds thudded and bounced off the thick armoured hide, but the creature did flinch back and kept its head down and itself low. Eventually, the creature jumped away and landed on an elevated platform, leaving itself open for both Shortbread and the Knight to fire their explosive weapons at it.

“Alright you jumping abomination, time to…” He was then cut off when another, slightly larger of the same creature landed on the compromised Knight. “Shit there are two of them!”

When the Rangers turned to try and help their downed comrade, sharp spines slammed into the ground in front of them, halting their progress and drawing their attention back to the first monster. Its tail was fanned out again and glowed a luminescent yellowy green (like it was radioactive) and then it swung its tail forward, sending more spines in their direction.

“What the fuck is this, it can launch its quills at us?”

There was a scream from the downed Knight with the other creature on top of him. The monster had its multiple tongues wrapped around the head and neck of the Knight’s armour and its jaws were clamped on the helmet. With a show of amazing strength, the creature tore the crippled armoured helmet from the rest of the armour, severing the head inside.

“No!” Shortbread yelled as he shot a grenade as the creature jumped away.

More quills came flying down from the other monster, preventing them from tracking the one that just killed their teammate.

“This is gonna be bad,” Paladin Shortbread sighed as he tried to avoid the incoming spines.

*Minutes later back at Bucklyn Cross*

Knights Caramel and Sour Cream panted heavily as they stepped off the lift and onto the deck of their suspension bridge base, and began to gallop toward the door. They were exhausted from their journey as well as carrying the dead weight of the robots on their backs. As they burst through the doors, they both nearly crashed into Star Paladin Cross who had been waiting for them.

“Just a few moments ago I lost the EFS tags of your Paladin and two other Knights. What the hell happened out there, Knights?” He demanded angrily.

“We got *wheeze* ambushed sir,” Knight Sour Cream reported.

“By what?”

“Monsters,” Caramel replied with a terrified gulp.

Sour Cream then went on to describe the thick-hided monster that jumped around on thick muscular legs, and that they had a hard time trying to get a lead on it with how well it maneuvered.

“Alright. First, drop off what you brought back off at the research labs, and then report back to me in the Command Room,” The Star Paladin ordered.

After a quick salute, the two Rangers hurried off to drop off their salvaged goods, and then proceeded to make their way back to the Command Room where they found the Star Paladin standing by the situation map with Scribe Harley.

“Ok, describe that monster again.”

Once Sour Cream finished describing the monster again, Scribe Harley tilted her head slightly. “That thing does sound rather familiar,” She then looked down at the holographic map. “Give me a few moments while I check some records.” And with that, she began to sift through some Steel Ranger recorded data in her search for something on the creature.

It took the scribe a good five minutes of flicking through documents to find what she was looking for. A single report submitted by a Ranger in the Mane Contingent up on the northern coast of Equestria, where there were a lot of marshlands. “Description is remarkably similar,” Harley said while she read the report until a photo appeared at the bottom of the document and revealed a half-submerged dark-skinned creature.

“That’s what attacked us,” Knight Caramel whimpered.

“They have been dubbed as Pulmonis for their jumping capability. According to this file, they are the result of two hundred years of radiation mutation and evolution of what was something called a frog,”

“THAT THING USED TO BE A FROG?!” Caramel shrieked.

“The radiation and time changed them to something better suited for its new lethal climate.”

“No shit,” Sour Cream grumbled.

“Ok, that’s the history lesson out of the way. What happened to your Paladin and the other Knights?” Star Paladin Cross repeated.

“Paladin Shortbread sent us on ahead because we were carrying those robots. He and the other Knights stayed behind to cover our retreat,” Knight Caramel explained.

Cross sighed deeply. “Then that could explain why their EFS tags have disappeared. They are most likely dead now because of the Pulmonis.”

A buzz rung in the Star Paladin’s ear and he lifted his hoof to his ear. “Yes?”

Sorry to disturb you Star Paladin, but you should come and look at these,” A female voice said over his comms.

“Alright Head Scribe Scarlet Cake. I’ll be right down,” Cross said before he turned to the two Knights. “You two, report to the infirmary and begin with your report.”

The two Knights nodded as he left the Command Room and headed down to the research labs. When he entered, he found the two robot husks on tables surrounded by scribes as they examined them.

“Ah, Star Paladin. Glad you could join us so quickly,” Scarlet greeted as she noticed the Star Paladin enter.

“It sounded urgent Scarlet. What have you found?” Cross said as he followed her to the table that held the incomplete robot body that was recovered from the basement workshop.

“This one is incomplete. It clearly wasn’t finished,” She began while pointing at various sections of the robotic body. “From what we can see of it so far, this one looks like it was meant to contain organic organs. The space within the cranium and the chest cavity are mostly smooth and don’t look like they were meant for any electronic equipment.”

“Like a robobrain?” Cross asked.

“Similar, but the fact that they are designed to look like equine skeletons as well as having powerful motors and joints suggest something else,” She then gestured to the other one which had a power cord plugged into its chest. “This one is different, but only slightly.”

The Star Paladin moved closer to the table. Lower class scribes moved out of his way so he could get an unrestricted look at the blown-up robot.

“This one, as clearly seen by its condition, must have been caught in the explosion of the Stroke C Mana-Core. We could determine that this one is entirely made of a lightweight titanium alloy, and that its head and chest are full of mechanical parts. The number on its left eyebrow is different too. The incomplete one is I-01 while this one is I-02. We haven’t uncovered everything yet, but considering how alike they are, I am willing to bet the number means something like a model or version. Oh, and over here Sir,” Scarlet then directed the Paladin to a terminal. A cable ran from the terminal and to the robot’s head. “We attempted to see if we could gleam any data from its CPU but sadly, the loss of all its power has resulted in a complete memory wipe and anything useful. However, there was just one thing.”

On the screen was a single line of text that read. “Infiltrator Mark 2 Unit 1, System Error!”

“Infiltrator?” Cross said as he looked back down at the dead robot. “This was meant to be some sort of spy robot?”

“We are still looking into what they are but a spy is what an Infiltrator is sir.”

Star Paladin Cross’s eyes widened in worry. “I need to have another chat with Knight’s Sour Cream and Caramel about what happened at Paradigm Cybernetics, and then I think I should contact the other contingents. They would likely want to know about these advanced spy robots.”

“That would be a wise move sir. The blast residue and the damage on I-02 is hours old, meaning this robot was once intact and operating at the time of the explosion. Celestia knows if there are more out there.”

With a nod, the Star Paladin thanked the Head Scribe for a job well done and left the labs to question the two knights further. With that finished, he acted on letting the rest of the Steel Ranger Contingents around the wasteland know about the possibility of robot spies.

XXXXX

We shared a rather sombre breakfast with Silver Disk the following morning. Fruity and I gave a more in-depth account of our adventure into the Impact Crater and what happened when we arrived at Paradigm Cybernetics. I felt responsible for the death of Quartermane, despite what both Fruity and Silver say. His death happened because those machines were after me. Silver said he wouldn’t include the two robots in his broadcast so that he wouldn’t endanger me by alerting any more of them. After our breakfast we gathered our things, thanked Silver for being a wonderful host, apologised for Quartermane once more, and we all left to continue our journey. As we were about to leave, Silver warned us that Pondale was Steel Ranger territory and that we should be careful.

We decided to go to Quatermane’s safehouse, like he wanted us to, to resupply. Xian was happy to finally get to travel with us again. The poor filly clung to me tightly as we flew through the streets all the way there, and when we landed she wouldn’t be more than a few steps away from me. It felt eerie to be here knowing that the old explorer was now dead.

We found some food to take with us, a pair of saddlebags that Fruity decided he’d wear, some bottles of purified water and finally, a room full of salvaged weapons. I had to leave the room because the influx of information my electronic brain was feeding me regarding the collection of weapons that was in there gave me a headache. Fruity saw some plasma rifles that he wanted to fix up along with a rifle harness. When he was done, he came out with a fully working plasma battlesaddle. On one side was a standard rifle, and on the other, a rifle he had modified to have a scattershot barrel with three emitters. I decided to have a look at what I could do for my current weapons. Thankfully, I found some mods that Quartermane had ready, maybe from previous guns he had modded or from what he found over the years. With the mods available to me, I modified my lever-action shotgun with a long tube for better ammo capacity, and upgraded its receiver for increased damage and firing rate. Lucky 13 was already upgraded fairly well, but there was a mod that I used that upgraded its receiver.

By the time we had finished, our weapon modifications and resupplied, it was after noon and the clouds had become very dark, like it was going to rain again. Before we left, we turned and faced the building and spoke a prayer to the goddesses to look after Quartermane. Then we turned south and began on our way to our next destination in Pondale.

It took us another couple of hours of navigating the streets of Manehattan to reach a road that headed south towards Pondale, and by then it was lashing it down with rain. Xian walked close to my side, whimpering because of the rain. I used a wing to shield her and keep her dry the best I could. Fruity and I were getting soaked, but our stetsons helped to keep the rain out of our eyes as we walked down the road.

“This is horrible,” I complained.

“Heh, you’ll get used to it. It’s like this nearly every day out here,” Fruity said with a chuckle at my dismay.

“It barely ever rained back in Las Pegasus.”

“Tell me about it. It was hot over there. I felt like I was being cooked,” Fruity complained before he flapped his wings to rid himself of excess water.

“You’ll get used to it,” I said with a smirk.

“Touche,” He said with another chuckle.

I giggled before I looked down to my side to see a miserable filly, shivering from the cold of the rain and wind. “Are you ok Xian?”

The poor filly put on a brave smile and nodded softly while she shivered.

“We need to find some shelter.”

“Agreed, this storm is getting worse, I can feel it,” Fruity said as he looked up.

“Ever since we left the city the buildings along this road have really thinned out,” I said while I looked up and down the road. “And with this storm in full swing it is difficult to see far ahead of us, what with all this haze.”

“Hmm, you’re right. This haze will also make seeing threats difficult,” Fruity said while he scanned the horizon.

We continued down the road a little longer and searched for suitable shelter. Eventually, we found a large warehouse that was still largely intact.

“Finally, we found something,” Fruity said as we came up to the crumpled chain-link fence that surrounded the industrial estate.

“I used to work for this company,” I said absentmindedly when I saw a large sign on the wall as we entered the warehouse grounds.

“Come again?” Fruity asked.

I pointed to the rusted-through sign on the wall of the warehouse. It barely had any colour left but the raised lettering was legible. “Equestrian Rehab Supplies,” I clarified.

We were in luck, for a side door inside a wagon loading bay was open and gave us access to the warehouse, providing shelter from the storm. As we pushed through the door, we got out of the rain and stepped into a dark, wide-open space. It seemed that the power to this place was out.

I’m cold and wet,” Xian whimpered in her native language as she shivered with water dripping from her.

So am I sweetie,” I said while I slowly looked around.

To our left, I could see where the processing and packing tables for the products were. In front of us, stretching out to our right, was the racking where all the stock was supposed to be stored. The warehouse appeared to be largely intact, but we could hear running water, likely coming from holes in the roof, which allowed the rain to pour through and flood the warehouse in various places.

“I’ll see if I can find us some towels,” Fruity said as he noticed a door to the right of the one we came in that led to a staffroom.

I nodded in confirmation while I stayed with Xian. The filly then shook herself like a dog, spraying water all over and onto me, the sudden spray making me yelp. The poor filly gasped and dropped into a sitting position looking very apologetic, which I found very cute.

I smiled warmly to put the filly at ease. “It’s ok sweetie, really,” I assured her.

She smiled and leaned against my foreleg. I draped a wing around her comfortingly. While I sat with her waiting for Fruity to return, I looked around again. Being back inside an ERS warehouse brought back memories of my first job as a warehouse operative. ERS sold medical and rehabilitation products to private, commercial or medical establishments across Equestria to help better the lives of those of the old, disabled or suffering mental health problems. From my time in ERS, I remembered picking and packing products ranging from fetlock pads to zimmer frames of various sizes, among other things.

“I found a towel,” Fruity suddenly chirped up, scaring me out of my nostalgia.

“Gah! Don’t do that!” I shrieked.

“Haha, s-sorry.” He gave me the towel before he headed back to the staffroom to try and find another one.

I couldn’t help the small smile that tugged at the corner of my lips as he walked away. He had a knack for scaring me like that but coupled with good-natured charm, I can’t help but like him for it. I took the towel he had brought into my hooves and dumped it over Xian, who eeped after being covered.

“Hold still please,” I said gently as I began to gently rub the towel up and down on both sides of the filly.

It took a good few minutes, but I eventually dried her the best I could with the towel. I had to hold back a giggle as her fur was matted in every which way. I then gently began to gently stroke her fur straight again with a hoof.

Once Xian was dry, I took off my armour pieces and then hung up my coat on the wrapping machine, which used to be used to wrap pallets in clingfilm, in front of the processing table so it could drip. Thankfully, my boots and socks were dry because of the long back of my coat. My back and torso were wet, however, as the rain soaked through the fabric. Once my hat was hung up, I used my wings to pull the towel over my head to get it dry first, before moving it along to dry my neck, torso and forelegs. It’s times like this I wish we still had manedryers.

After a few minutes of drying myself, Fruity re-joined us, who was also dry. It was at that moment when a loud metallic groan reverberated throughout the warehouse. Xian squeaked in fright and hugged tightly to my foreleg while Fruity and I looked out to the main warehouse.

“What was that?” I asked with my ears stood up in alert.

“Sounds like the roof is suffering from the years of wear and tear,” Fruity said while he stared up at the roof, the rain still hammering at the corrugated metal.

“I still need to get used to all the new sounds that I’ll be hearing out here,” I whined.

“You’ll be hearing a lot of stressed metal noises out here… among other things,” Fruity agreed.

I gently stroked Xian with a reassuring wing. “It’s ok Xian, it’s just sound. It won’t hurt you.”

The filly seemed to relax at this, but she still stayed close to me.

“We should have a quick look around until the storm passes. Maybe we can find something useful,” Fruity suggested.

I nodded in agreement and we began to walk up and down the aisles of the racking. As we walked, Fruity walked on the other side of me so that Xian was in the middle, which helped to make her feel safe and walk in between us and not under my hooves.

We found numerous things but nothing useful and nothing worth selling, as their purpose was no longer appropriate in the wasteland. After five one-hundred-foot aisles of nothing, Fruity suddenly stopped when we entered the next aisle.

“The hell is this?” He asked as he held up a small green box. It was rotted around the top so it lost its identity, but the picture of what it was, was still there. The box showed a rope ladder and on the back, a short rope ladder that was laid out on a bed and tied to the feet of the bed.

“Oh, I remember these. That’s a Bed Rope Ladder. It’s meant for those that have trouble getting into bed and need a little help,” I explained.

Fruity raised a brow as he looked at the diagram on the back. “You sure? Looks like a bondage device to me.”

I burst out into a fit of giggles, for that was exactly what I thought when I first found this product when I worked for this company. “Hehe, that’s my thoughts exactly.”

He laughed with me and chucked the bed rope ladder away as we continued. Sadly, there wasn’t anything that could have been useful or valuable on the shelves nor higher in the racking. If there was, a lot of the stock had been corroded because of the holes in the roof, and the large puddles of water on the floor that had spread to many of the pallets of stock.

Eventually, the rain began to ebb away as we made it to the centre of the warehouse. When we did, we found a huge surprise.

“Um Fruity, what’s this?” I asked in shock, staring up at the large egg-shaped metal object with stabilizing thins on the smaller end. It was tangled up in broken and twisted sheet metal, sitting on the broken racking it landed on and the electrical wires that once ran through ducts in the ceiling were dangling all around it.

“That… would be a Balefire Bomb,” He answered like it was an everyday occurrence.

“Wait what!” I almost screamed at him as I scooped up Xian with a wing and backpedalled several feet away.

“It’s most likely a dud,” He then looked back to the bomb and the nest of metal it made upon its landing. “If it crashed through a steel roof, through the metal racking and then smashed into the floor here WITHOUT exploding, I would say it wouldn’t blow up at all.”

“I don’t give a shit!” I shrieked. “I wouldn’t trust that thing to hang my hat on.” I then set Xian back down on her hooves. “We got a kid to think about here Fruity.”

Fruity looked back to the bomb, then at us. More importantly at the shivering zebra filly with wide scared eyes beside me. His facial expression dropped and became more sombre as he understood the serious nature of situation.

“I guess you’re right,” He turned around and his flank bumped the metal racking, which made it groan loudly with stress.

My ears wilted at the horrible sound of the stressed metal. “Let’s leave before something happens.”

“Yeah, ok. It sounds like the rain is easing off,” Fruity said as he joined us. We began to walk back towards the front of the warehouse.

Before we exited the aisle, I stopped when I noticed another product that I remembered from my warehousing days. “Oh, a Wheelchair Poncho! If we can cut this down, it could make a good cloak for Xian,” I said as I pulled a poncho out from the box. It was still inside its plastic bag, so it wasn’t rotten.

“Why would that make a good cloak for her?” Fruity asked as we walked out of the aisle away from the bomb and towards the packing table.

I opened the packet and pulled out the folded-up poncho, designed to cover an adult pony in a wheelchair. “It is made from resistant materials. If it rains again before we make it to Pondale, this will make a good coat for Xian if we cut it down to size.”

Fruity nodded as he began to look for something to cut it with. Eventually, we found an old safety knife. Although it was slightly rusty, its blade was still sharp enough to cut the fabric of the poncho. After a quick session of cutting and having Xian try it on (with some more cutting to get it just right), we had a small cloak made for the young filly.

“There you go Xian. This should help keep you dry,” I offered as I held out the newly made cloak out for her.

She eyed it for a moment, then poked her head through the hole in the middle and let the cloak drape down over her back to cover her sides and flanks. She looked herself over and smiled. “Tha… thank you,” She said. She still needed work with her Equestrian as she had to start that again, but she was progressing well. I couldn’t be happier with how far she’s come in such a short time.

“Alright, let’s get out of here. I will actually feel safer outside and away from that bomb,” I said.

Fruity nodded as he led the way out.

Once we got back out of the warehouse and onto the road, we continued onto Pondale. The rain was still present but it had devolved into a fine rain that wasn’t so bad. However, as the hours passed and the sky began to darken, we realised that we were still a fair distance away from our destination, and shelter for the night wasn’t looking to be close by. There was no chance we were turning back to spend the night in a place that could explode and kill us all. Since leaving the warehouse, we encountered fewer buildings until we were just walking down a long road with nothing around but open land. That was another thing. We hadn’t seen any dangerous creatures or ponies since Manehattan either. We could just be lucky or we’d eventually run into something nasty that’d explain the stillness of the area.

“It’s gonna get dark real soon,” I commented as I looked up at the near black clouds. “We need to find shelter. Preferably something with a roof.”

“If you are worried about Bloodwings, don’t worry too much,” Fruity said while he scanned the area. “Open land like this with no cover even for them, they will keep together in small clusters for protection. That will make them an easy target.”

“I suppose so, but for Xian’s sake I’d rather avoid them.”

“I get ya, don’t worry. I’m still looking for something we can use for shelter,” The pegasus assured.

“We should have stopped at that Spark Battery Recharging Station ten minutes ago,” I whined.

“And have you screaming because of rats? No thank you.”

After another hour, it was on the verge of total darkness outside. Without the open sky, stars or moon, the clouds made the surface incredibly dark and the sun was about to set. Luckily for us, we stumbled upon an articulated lorry that had belonged to Starlight Industries, if the massive Starlight Industries banner on the side of the trailer was any indication.

When we walked around to the back, we found that the door was wide open, with a makeshift ramp that led up into the trailer. We hurried up into the trailer to get out of the open and found a mattress inside, along with a lunchbox and several metal boxes of miscellaneous junk inside them related to the company. There was also a portable cooking stove next to the bed and a Mare-do-Well Comic laying on said bed. One the boxes had an assortment of gemstones, and I sorely needed some more if I was to keep my power level topped up on the move. I gave the comic to Xian because it might help her equestrian reading and give her something fun to look at instead of this abysmal landscape.

“This looks cosy,” I commented as I looked at the contents of the trailer. It looked like it was arranged to be somepony’s living accommodations.

“Looks like somepony lived here once,” Fruity pointed out as he set his bags and battlesaddle down, stretching out his back and wings.

“Think we’ll be safe here for the night?” I asked with a hint of worry.

“Don’t worry, we’ll be fine,” He said with his goofy smile. I couldn’t help but smile back and feel slightly relieved at his confident optimism. He almost always had a positive outlook on things. I hoped with what he was helping me achieve and what was chasing us that it didn’t hurt that quality of his. It would break my heart if he lost that positive light.

“Bollocks. No shutter,” He said quietly to himself while he examined the doorframe.

“What’s wrong?” I asked as I unloaded my stuff beside the bed, and removed my armour and coat so I could lay on the mattress in my fur.

“There is no door. It’s gonna be open all night,” He replied as he turned to his plasma rifle battlesaddle and pulled it closer to the door, and then began to rummage through the many boxes around us.

I lay down on the mattress, which was big enough for all of us, and helped Xian out of her new cloak. “What are you doing now?” I asked once I pulled the small makeshift cloak off the young filly, folded it up neatly and put it with my things.

“Aha!” Fruity chirped happily when he found some wire.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I’m setting up a tripwire trap so that if anything tries to get in here, it’s gonna get both barrels of my plasma saddle.”

I smiled warmly at his thoughtfulness, then smiled a little brighter when Xian cuddled up against my side.

“There. That should do it,” Fruity said after he finished setting up his trap across the floor at the entrance to the truck. He then removed his duster and just dumped it on the floor by the bed before settling down beside me and draping a comforting wing across my withers. I shivered with delight at his touch and leaned against him.

“Hmm. Is this the first time we have actually slept together?” I asked as I rested my head into the crook of his neck while I draped my wing over Xian.

“What about that time before I found out what you are?” He asked while he gently used his chin to stroke the top of my head.

“I wasn’t myself then. I kinda used you because of my emotional state, so it didn’t count,” I said sadly.

“I guess you’re right. It’s ok though. I forgave you after you explained yourself so we started again remember?” He leaned his head down to gently pecked my cheek. “Things have been so much better between us after that, despite the obvious things.”

I leaned my head back so I could look at him and smiled appreciatively at him. “You are so nice to me.”

I could see Xian watching us with her big green eyes from the corner of my eye as Fruity leaned his head closer to me.

“Why shouldn’t I be?” He asked with his goofy smile before tilted his head slightly to one side and pressed his lips up against mine in a kiss. I let out a surprised moan, but then closed my eyes, melted into the kiss and pushed back, reciprocating the action with as much vigour.

XXXXX

The rain had stopped a couple of hours ago. The night had fully set in, bathing the world of the Equestrian Wasteland in darkness. The darkness acted as the perfect cover for plenty of the wasteland’s many creatures; for as once the sun goes down, the predators began their hunt, making the land more dangerous for those not wary. But this night, the darkness helped to conceal something else as it stood on the roof of the ruined Spark Battery Recharging Station, staring down the road south.

The robotic pony in scorched combat armour had his gaze locked on a lorry a few miles down the road. Despite the old truck being almost invisible in the dark of the night, he could still track her power signature over the distance between them. He was close enough to feel her Mana-Core.

Nexus remained rooted to the roof, watching the lorry. He may no longer felt compelled to follow his original programming, but he still felt obligated to ensure her safety (like his secondary objective had stated). After killing a Hellhound that surely would have killed them all, and distracting the two Mark 2 units that ambushed them in Paradigm Cybernetics, Nexus felt he needed to approach them; but after what happened at the entrance to Stable 16 that led to his new-found personality, he wasn’t sure how he could do it without them attacking him upon sight.

While the machine pondered on how he could peacefully approach I-01 and the pegasus without getting his head blown off (more likely now with the foal around), his audio receptors began to pick up an unusual sound in the night. Having been wandering the wastelands, following his target, he had absorbed quite a lot information from the world and the ponies he had hidden himself from. As the sound grew louder and clearer, he recognised it as music and the track was the familiar tune played by the numerous Sprite-Bots, often seen flying around the wastes. He turned his head back in the direction of the city and sure enough, there was a Sprite-Bot bobbing along up the road towards the truck while pumping out the “March of the Parasprite” tune.

“What is one of those doing all the way out here at this time of night?” Nexus asked himself, feeling a little suspicious about the little droid.

When the small droid got within a few feet of the lorry, its music suddenly cut out and its lazy bobbing flight pattern suddenly became rigid and more controlled. This immediately flew up red flags for Nexus. He quickly picked up the Pipe Sniper Rifle from his back and took aim. Looking down through the scope, he could clearly see that the Sprite-Bot had turned to face the trailer and was hovering along the side, heading towards the rear.

“It must have sensed them as well,” He said to himself as he tightened the nano-fibre hairs around the stock and trigger of his rifle. “Can’t let it get inside.”

He followed its movement until he was satisfied with his aim and fired. The bang from his weapon was just a quiet pop over by the truck and wouldn’t have raised any alarm if heard. However, the Sprite-Bot felt something smash into its light-alloy spherical body, and then tear right through and into its core mechanics. With a .308 bullet tearing through its core, the small bot lost its ability to remain airborne, and with a sputter and pop, it fell to the ground like a lead weight.

Nexus sighed in relief as a response to preventing any more harm to come to I-01 again. He felt a sense of accomplishment for protecting them.

Meanwhile, in a cave hidden within a mountain somewhere far away, a large purple dragon with green spines let out a surprised cry as the Sprite-Bot he was controlling suddenly went dark in a loud burst of static.

XXXXX

The next morning, we awoke to some strong winds, but luckily no rain. The wind wouldn’t be a problem if it didn’t get too strong, and unlike the west it was too wet to create dust storms.

We didn’t waste any time getting our stuff together, and we left the truck to continue onwards towards Pondale in the early morning light. It did worry us when we found the dead Sprite-Bot beside the trailer with a bullet hole through it, but since we were still alive we decided that it might have been shot by someone that just passed by at a distance. Either way, we had not been discovered by it or who shot it.

The next couple of miles were pretty boring, except for when we witnessed a monster attack at a riverbank off from the road. We were crossing a bridge that crossed a river that was more of a trickle now, but still very muddy around what used to be the riverbed. We noticed a pony, whether the pony was a wastelander, raider or somepony else we couldn’t tell from the distance, but he was trying to reach for something in the mud. At first, we thought there was a small group of rocks near the pony, but we couldn’t be more wrong. For when the pony reached for what he was going for, the rock formation exploded from the mud and it turned out to be some giant four-legged creature. The creature had short stumpy forelegs but long, muscular hindlegs, a thick tail, a thick looking grey scaly hide and a split jawed head. It grabbed the pony with its jaws and multiple tongues, and pulled him down into the mud. Fruity and I didn’t stick around to see what happened next as we didn’t want to attract the monster’s attention. When we had got far enough away, I asked the inevitable question about the creature and even Fruity didn’t know what that thing was, so we just left it that and hoped to never see it again.

By the time it reached noon, we had passed a road sign that said that Pondale was about ten miles away, meaning we’d make it pretty soon. When we stopped to take a break, Fruity decided he would fly up a bit so he could see what lay ahead at our destination. When he landed, he told me he saw a large military base off to the side of the old town, and that we should try ditching the main road so that we could enter the town away from the military base, and therefore the likelihood of Steel Ranger detection.

Shortly after our break, we continued forward. We came to a T-junction where the road would branch off, either going straight into the town via the main road where it was likely being watched, or through this B road that would probably pass by some places on the way outside of the town before entering the town someplace else.

“We should certainly take this side road,” Fruity suggested. “It probably won’t be guarded or watched like the main road. If it is, it won’t be anywhere near as heavy.”

I nodded and then laid down. “Climb on up Xian. We’ll likely want to move fast or fly at a moment’s notice,” I told the little filly.

Xian nodded with her wide fearful eyes, looking around at the twisted scenery as she climbed onto my back and hugged her forelegs around my neck. As we got closer to the town, the number of dead trees grew exponentially; and to a young filly that was used to the almost barren desert region of the Marejave, it probably did look terrifying for her. With the young filly secure on my back, I nodded to Fruity and we began to trot at a brisk pace down the road away from the main road in the hope of avoiding a possible major Steel Ranger presence.

After a couple of hours longer, we finally entered Pondale from its industrial side. The road we were following took us between several collapsed cotton and steel mills. One of the mills was still standing along with its chimney, and I assumed that was only because the reinforcing rings around the chimney and the brickwork having metal ties along the wall were holding the old building together. These old mills even pre-dated the start of the war, and several had work done to them to reinforce them so that they wouldn’t collapse due to age. I was surprised this one hadn’t collapsed like the others, but I didn’t want to disturb it in case it pushed its integrity over the edge.

Once we cleared the mills, we could see the town. It was an old rustic town where most of the buildings and houses were built from stone and had slate roofs. Behind the town was a small mountain that even from here, we could see had a large hole cut into it. I remembered some Stable-Tec newsletters saying that some stables would be built into the faces of mountains or under them, so I supposed a Stable may lie inside this mountain. While gazing out over the town, we noticed how most of the buildings were small. Mostly residential, apart from the town hall that was the biggest building in the middle of the town and had distinct Romane columns holding up the roof over its front door. The really big buildings, those used for commercial, were located on the outskirts like these mills.

“Well, I can already see a problem,” Fruity said as he gazed out over the town.

“What do you see?” I asked as I stood beside him and followed where he was looking.

“The town looks to be divided. On one side, we got the walking toasters along with that base of theirs, and on the other side we got everypony’s favourite knobs, as well as some sort of no-pony’s-land in the middle of the town,” Fruity said while pointing out what he could see. I nodded as I followed where he pointed. The town on the west side appeared to be occupied by the Steel Rangers and looked relatively normal. But on the east side, the town appeared to be occupied by Raiders and it was clear to see their territory. The Raiders had built makeshift defences, fences and even walkways across roofs all throughout the east side. Another big giveaway was how nearly every square inch of Raider territory was tagged with some sort of graffiti.

“What do you suggest?” I asked, not liking what we could see.

“I think our best bet would be to take the middle ground between the two factions, but keep towards the Steel Ranger side. I think the Raiders would be more inclined to cause a ruckus and draw attention than the Rangers would.”

I nodded in agreement. “I also think we should try for the town hall. If we are to find the Colonel’s home, we’ll need a map so that we aren’t searching aimlessly in either group’s territory.”

“Good idea,” Fruity nodded with a smile of approval. “Ok, we’ll need to be very careful because the town hall is on the Ranger’s side.”

I nodded and then turned my head around to check on Xian. “How are you holding up Xian? Are you ok?” I asked her softly.

“I-it’s kinda, um, c-creepy here,” She whimpered while gently tightening her grip around my neck.

I gave her my best reassuring smile. “Don’t worry honey. Both Fruity and I are here to look out for you,” I told her.

“Yeah, don’t worry kid,” Fruity assured while flashing her a cocky smile.

We gave the town another once over before we followed the road from the industrial area down into the town proper. We moved cautiously between the buildings to minimise our exposure. The walls of the buildings in this supposedly no-pony’s-land were riddled with bullet holes, and the old road had been peppered with small craters from explosions caused by mines or the Steel Rangers’ heavy weaponry.

I used my tail to gently pick up Xian and put her back down on the broken pavement in between us. “Sorry Xian. I just don’t want you to be an easy target on my back,” I said to her softly. “Stay between us.”

“She’s right Xi,” Fruity agreed before he took his battlesaddle’s firing bit into his mouth in preparation.

I was constantly looking at the buildings we were approaching and their roofs. Even when my EFS was showing no targets, I still scanned the area because I didn’t know how far its range was. However, after a good ten minutes of nothing, my synthetic hearing began to pick up a sound up ahead.

“Fruity, can you hear something?” I asked while my ears perked up and strained to ear better.

“Now that you mention it, I can just about here something but I can’t tell what.”

I nodded, glad to know I wasn’t going nuts. As we grew closer to the sound, it got clearer and clearer, until I could identify the sound and it made my blood run cold.

“That’s a foal crying!” I gaped with a horrified look on my face and quickened my pace to find the source.

“Whoa, hey Crystal, hold up!” Fruity urged.

I couldn’t slow down. I felt compelled to help this innocent foal in need. What decent pony would ignore the pleas of a foal? Finally, after rounding a corner of a ruined corner shop, a foal carriage came into sight and my synthetic vision highlighted the pram as the source of the foal cry.

“Fruity, keep an eye on Xian while I check on this foal,” I told him before I quickly made my way over to the foal carriage that was on the curb nearest the Raider territory.

“Crystal wait… something feels off about this,” Fruity called over to me.

I came up to the pram on its left side and peered inside. “It’s ok little one I’m…” I cut myself off at what I saw inside the pram. It wasn’t a foal. There was hiss and a clunk once I got close, like I triggered something.

“Wait… Oh shit, Crystal! Get away, NOW, it’s a BOMB!” Fruity screamed to me, but it was too late. I realised too late myself when my threat warning flashed. The eyes of the doll’s head that sat upon a couple of frag mines inside the pram glowed red as it primed to blow. I began to turn, to try and jump away, but just as I got my body parallel with the foal carriage it exploded in a violent shower of shrapnel and fire.

The blast consumed most of my face and shoulder. I felt a great burning pain across my skin, and over most of the right side of my face. I also felt numb around my eye and cheek. I cried out in pain as the force of the blast threw me across the road and back over to my coltfriend and little Xian. I could smell burnt flesh and clothing, and my vision had become wonky with half being in colour and the other being in electric blue.

“Oh shit, are you ok?” Fruity cried out in concern as he rushed over to my side and wrapped his forelegs around me to help pull me back up, despite my weight difference.

I groaned as my head was spinning and my ears were ringing from the explosion, but I was able to pull myself together enough to focus onto Fruity.

“Ugh, I feel – ohhhh… Like I’ve been hit by – ugh - by a sledgehammer,” I grunted in pain. The force of the explosion really rattled my endoskeleton. When I talked I got a weird sense of breeze blowing right through my mouth, and my voice had a slight electronic twinge to it.

“I’m so sorry Crystal. I should have known that was a trap,” Fruity growled to himself. “It wasn’t until you were too close to it that I remembered that those fucktards often leave traps like that lying around.”

I groaned as I pulled myself up into a sitting position. “Ugh… It’s not your fault, I shouldn’t have just… ran off like I did.”

“Wait, you’re no zebra. What the fuck are you?” A young feminine voice yelled out from behind Fruity.

We all turned in surprise to find that somepony had stumbled upon us, and was standing in a ginnel between two houses: A Steel Ranger. She wasn’t decked out in power armour, but she was wearing a black jumpsuit with a complete set of copper-coloured combat armour attached to her legs, shoulders and chest. She wore no helmet and her mane flopped down nearly over one eye, and was cut so it wouldn’t be any longer than hanging down to be level with her cheek. Her mane was white, although half of it was red from having been dyed at one point. The surprising thing about her was that she was entirely white from nose to tail, but her eyes were red. To top it off, she was a unicorn too. The other surprising element about this young Steel Ranger unicorn was that she also wore a Pip-Buck on her left foreleg, which was unexpected. She stared at us, primarily me, with her big bright red eyes. Meanwhile, her horn glowed with a colourless magic, levitating a scoped, black repeater rifle that was aimed at us.

“Whoa there. Easy, we don’t wanna cause any trouble,” Fruity said calmly as he stepped forward.

“I wasn’t talking to you, Enclave Reject!” She snapped harshly.

I stood up and wobbled slightly since I was still recovering from the explosion. “Please don’t shoot. We just need to find someplace and then we’ll leave,” I said with a shake of my head.

The young mare stepped closer, fully exposing herself and to our surprise, she had to be in her teens with how young she looked as well as her stature, but she carried a strong but hateful glare as she pointed her rifle at me. “I didn’t ask that Stripe! I asked what the fuck you are. You are certainly not equine?”

“Oh shit, you’re exposed,” Fruity whispered.

I reached up to my cheek, which still felt numb, and froze with wide eyes when I felt my hoof touch not only my teeth, but a control rod that helped to open and close my mouth as well. That explained the odd breeze feeling going inside my mouth. As I trailed my hoof up, I then realised my right eye was also exposed, which also explained why half of what I saw was in an electric blue hue.

“I…I…” I was at a loss for words now that I was exposed to somepony that was part of a group that liked to take pre-war tech for themselves as if it belonged to them. Considering I’m some sort of robot, they would certainly see me as such a thing or something to destroy, and I didn’t know how to respond.

“I asked you a question Stripe!” The young mare growled more forcefully.

Suddenly Xian jumped out in front of me, tears streaming down her cheeks as she looked up at the young Steel Ranger with a gun pointed at me.

“Please don’t hurt mummy!” She cried out as loud as she could in the best equestrian she could possibly speak.

The hateful glare evaporated the moment she laid eyes on Xian. Her face dropped into that of one of sadness and remembrance. As she stared as Xian, her gun lowered and Fruity seized this as his opportunity to dash forward. The sudden movement seemed to snap the teenage mare out of her thoughts, but it wasn’t fast enough as before she could raise her gun back up, Fruity quickly raised his hoof and smacked her on the horn hard. With a cry of utter agony, she dropped to her haunches and clutched at her forehead with her forehooves, crying in pain. The smack to her horn also instantaneously cut off her magic, and her repeater rifle fell to the ground beside her, which Fruity was quick to kick over to me.

I picked up her rifle with my tail while I stepped forward, then sat behind Xian and gently pulled her into a comforting hug as the poor filly had begun to cry. “There, there,” I cooed softly to her.

“Don’t want you calling your tin can friends now do we?” Fruity said as he used his wing to pluck out a small black earpiece from the mare’s ear. He then threw it on the ground and stomped on it.

“Argh fuck! Don’t you have any idea how much that fucking hurt?” She growled with tears in her eyes.

“Probably as much as somepony pulling out our feathers,” Fruity shot back.

“Look, um, we don’t want any trouble. We just want to find a house and then we’ll leave, that’s it,” I told the young mare.

The white mare looked at me while she still held her head.

“Look kid, maybe we can make an arrangement,” Fruity said as he sat down beside me.

“My name is Appletart and not a kid. I’m sixteen,” She grumbled irritably. Wow she was quickly angered.

“Ok, ok, simmer down Appletart,” Fruity said softly. “Maybe you can help us get to where we need to go quickly and help us avoid Steel Ranger patrols. In return, we’ll give you back your gun.”

I nodded as it sounded like a good plan from Fruity. “In fact,” I began. “If you agree to help us, I’ll give your gun back now,” I said while holding the rifle up for her to see.

“What makes you think I won’t just shoot you when you give me my gun back anyway?” Appletart asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Because I don’t think even you are that stupid,” Fruity replied while gesturing to his plasma battlesaddle.

There was a whimper from between my forelegs as Xian hugged close for comfort. Again, the young mare’s attitude changed, becoming more sombre and calmer when she looked at how scared Xian was.

With a heavy sigh, the teenage mare spoke again. “Alright, fine. Where do you need to go?”

“7 Crescent Road in the Steeple District,” I told her and then gave her back her rifle with my tail. She holstered her rifle once I let go.

“That is oddly specific,” She pointed out.

“Like I said, we need to find a house.”

“Well, it is in our territory and close to the base of the mountain,” Appletart said with a hint of sadness upon mentioning the mountain.

“Well, what are we waiting for? Lead the way, Snowy,” Fruity chirped.

“Call me that again, and I’ll be sure to clip your wings,” The young Steel Ranger threatened. “And it won’t be that easy either. We have recently been put on high alert so our patrols have been increased.”

“Why is that?” I asked curiously.

“Because of you,” She pointed out.

“Me!?”

“Yeah. Something to do with the Manehattan Contingent discovering the remains of what they called Spy Robots. We have all been put on high alert in case there are more. You certainly fit the bill for a spy robot, what with you having skin on top your robot body,” Appletart explained.

“Shit… when Quartermane sacrificed himself and killed those two robots that were chasing us, the Steel Rangers must have stumbled upon their remains,” Fruity theorised quietly to me.

“Well, we better get moving if we want to avoid as many patrols as possible,” Appletart grumbled.

“Oh, and don’t think about trying to lure us to your base. I’ve seen it so I’ll know if you’re trying to trick us.”

“As much as I don’t want to help a robot and her Enclave Reject pet, I don’t want to see that filly get hurt or become motherless…” She said with a sigh. “Though I don’t understand how that little kid has grown attached to a robot,” She added under her breath.

“Celestia almighty, calm down,” Fruity sighed.

“Ugh, just come on,” Appletart said as she got up and began to trot towards the buildings on the Steel Rangers side. “One rule: follow my directions when I say.”

“Ok,” I agreed as I picked up Xian and placed her on my back again. “Hold on tight again Xian. You’ll be just fine,” I said softly to her.

We followed close behind the young Ranger but kept vigilant, just in case we ran into trouble or Appletart went against her word and led us right into a patrol. Thankfully, as we followed the young mare we could tell she was leading us towards the mountain, and every so often she would stop us a short distance away from a street while a patrol passed by. She had to stop us a few times, which did reflect on their high alert status with how much they were patrolling.

While we were following Appletart, I decided to break the ice to try and lighten the mood.

“Um, my name is Crystal Éclair,” I began nervously. “This is my coltfriend Fruity, and the filly on my back is Xian.”

The young mare looked around a corner of a stone building before she continued up the street. “It is nice to see that you feel for each other,” She said while giving us a sidelong glance. “But a bit odd with her being a machine, since it would mean she isn’t real.”

“She is indeed real kid. She’s more of a real pony than you realise,” Fruity defended with his wings extended.

“Oh?”

I sighed. “It is why we are here. Where we are going might have the exact location to where I need to go to get the answers I need. You see, inside this robotic head, is my organic brain,” I explained and paused for a moment to let it sink in. “I used to be a full flesh and blood Crystal Pony before somepony by the name of Colonel Ironside got his hooves on me. When I woke up after what he had done to me, I found myself here in this hell and like this.”

Appletart turned to look at me fully. “You’re a victim, just like so many others,” She said sadly. “That is something we have in common. I am just as much of a victim and thrusted into this world as you are,” She said glumly.

“What happened to you?” I asked cautiously. “Um, if… if you don’t mind me asking?”

Appletart sighed deeply and pointed up to the mountain with the hole. “There, inside the mountain is Stable 88 and that was my home for eight years,” She began. I suppose that explains where the Pip-Buck came from. “Everything was fine until one day a group of Raiders attacked, heavily armed and used a technologically advanced cutting torch to cut through the door. They slaughtered everypony once they got inside. I was only one spared because my mother put me inside a panic room. That day I lost everypony I knew, including my mother. My home was rendered unliveable so I was forced to leave. I was picked up by a Steel Ranger patrol that came to investigate the unusual Raider activity, and since then I’ve been living and training under them. I’ve been an Initiate ever seen.”

“I’m so, so sorry,” I said, feeling horrible for her having to have relived such a painful memory.

“Its fine,” She said with a sigh.

“Eight years and you are still an Initiate. Surely you would have been promoted by now,” Fruity said.

“I’m only sixteen. I won’t be granted those higher ranks until I’m eighteen and pass my final exam. I’m lucky they let me patrol.”

“Well I hate to break it to ya kid, but the Steel Rangers aren’t all they are cracked up to be,” Fruity grumbled.

“What do you know...?”

“Don’t call me “Enclave Reject” again, for the love of Celestia,” Fruity interrupted with a sigh.

“Alright… Feathers,” She smirked.

“Ugh, let’s just keep going,” Fruity groaned while I giggled.

We stopped at a street corner. Fruity and I with Xian on my back hung back while Appletart checked around the corner to be sure it was clear. The white unicorn crouched down low to make herself as low as possible, hid as much of her body as she could, and levitated her scoped repeater rifle, peering down the scope. She stayed like that, slowly sweeping her rifle back and forth, for a little while before she pulled back and sighed with relief.

“Ok. Patrol route is clear, but we’ll need to be quick to avoid another patrol. There is a small park at the end of the street that we can pass through to cut some time off to bring us much closer to Crescent Road sooner,” She explained.

“Ok, lead the way. We’ll be close behind you,” I said before I gave a rundown on what was about to happen to Xian. The little filly nodded, gently hugged herself to the back of my neck and got herself ready.

With a nod, the young Steel Ranger holstered her rifle and began to trot down the street at a brisk pace. This area of the town looked pretty good for its age, despite the boarded-up doors and some windows. The stone houses and buildings lining the street looked to be in good condition. As we approached the park, we came across an area of the street that looked as if a small battle had taken place. There were bullet holes in the windows and in the stone walls, as well as a large crater in the middle of the road that was full of rain water.

Suddenly, my threat warning flashed and the sound of grinding caught my attention from above. I quickly looked up just in time to see a cascade of roof slate tiles slide off the roof of the boarded-up hotel beside us and start tumbling down like lethal razor blades. With the way the slates were coming down in a wide spread, they would land on us all.

“Fruity, tiles!” I warned while I pointed one of my large feathery wings up.

“Whoa!” He exclaimed as he beat his wings and high jumped to the opposite side of the street to avoid the falling blade-like slates.

The young teen mare that was in front of us didn’t know where the danger was, and was looking around frantically on ground level. I quickly guessed the young mare wouldn’t see the tiles until it was too late, so I jumped forward to be beside her. I quickly scanned the area around me, my synthetic eyes helping me identify anywhere close by that we could use for shelter. Just next to us was a bus stop, so I quickly shoved Appletart under the bus shelter. Then, as quickly as I could, I plucked Xian off my back and sat her down in the corner and braced myself on top of her, to shield her from any shards that might bounce in at us when the tiles hit the floor and shatter. The second we had before the tiles finally struck ground was agonisingly slow, but when the slates began to hit the metal roof of the shelter or the street in front of us, it sounded like the world was falling apart. During the rain of slates, I felt small fragments pepper my rear and legs until something sharp bit into my left thigh.

“Eeyow!” I yelped in pain from the stabbing feeling in my leg. I turned my head to get a look. A large splinter of slate had stuck into my thigh just below my glyphmark.

“You used yourself to shield your foal and…” The young unicorn looked surprised and a little conflicted, as she dispelled a small shield spell she had used to encapsulate herself with during the hail of slates. “You can feel pain?”

“Yes - ow, ugh - the pony that made me… designed me so I could still feel things like I could have when I still full flesh and blood,” I explained with a wince. “Would you be a dear and – ow - pull this out please?” I then held out my leg with the big slate splinter sticking out of it.

“Um, sure,” She said as her horn lit up with its clear magical light, and with a swift yank, she pulled the large splinter from my thigh.

I bit my lip to prevent me from screaming out due to the pain. I could feel my thigh throb after the slate was removed, and grow a little damp and sticky as blood slowly oozed from the small wound and into the elastic of the top of the sock I wore. “T-thank you.”

The young mare nodded. She gave me a sidelong glance before she stepped out of the bus shelter to continue down the road.

Fruity rejoined us and didn’t look very happy. “You could have used your little shield spell to protect them too, you know,” He grumbled.

“Fruity!” I chided quietly.

“I would not have been able to. I am still learning to master my shield spell control. I can manifest a shield large enough for myself and strong enough to protect from most melee weapons and thrown weapons, but it isn’t strong enough to deflect bullets. I would need greater control of my spell work before I can move on to bigger shields,” She explained.

“Don’t mind him, he’s just being protective,” I said softly and then nuzzled Fruity to silence a protest. “Anyway, what happened here to leave the street looking like a warzone?”

“Raiders…” Appletart said with a hint of anger.

I nodded, but then stopped and looked back to where the tiles now littered the floor in sharp shards, and then looked up to the roof of the hotel where there was now a large portion of the slate roof missing. I narrowed my eyes at the structure to try and get a better view.

“Hey, you ok?” Fruity asked as he gently nudged me to get my attention.

“Huh? Oh yea, um, just wondered what made all those tiles come crashing down,” I told him while still staring up at the roof.

“This town is very old. I wouldn’t be surprised if anything just fell apart due to age,” Appletart said as she looked back to see if we were following.

“Are you sure you’re ok?” Fruity asked with worry since I was still staring at the roof.

“Yeah, I think… it’s just that, I dunno how to explain it, but it’s like I can feel a presence or something and… its coming from up there,” I said while pointing at the roof.

Fruity opened his mouth to say something but Appletart beat him to it. “Hey! We gotta move before another patrol comes through here, so let’s move! Double time ponies!” She ordered.

XXXXX

Nexus leaned back against the intact portion of the roof, and had lowered himself so the rim of the building would hide him from view down by street level.

“Stupid. I should have known the roof wouldn’t have been able to hold my weight,” The scorched armoured robot chided himself. “It is not the right time to show myself yet.”

He waited for a few moments, listening to the ponies in the street and waiting for them to continue. When he was sure they had moved on, he edged to the rim of the wall and looked down into the street. He saw I-01 and the ponies accompanying her turn off and enter a dead park. Now that it was safe to do so he stood up, but a hint of movement caught his attention further up the road.

“Steel Ranger patrol, just like what the young unicorn had warned about,” The machine reached onto his back with his nano-fibre tail and plucked the crude pipe sniper rifle off his back, holding it ready to fire. There was now a large black drum on the end of the gun barrel that was full of small holes. He had crafted a suppressor to give his makeshift sniper quieter shots. “Let’s give them a distraction,” He said to himself as he aimed through the scope at a window close to the approaching patrol.

XXXXX

The park was full of brown, lifeless grass and wilted, leafless trees. It was a very disturbing sight for me because I remembered what parks used to look like: lush and green (from what I remembered from my visits in the Crystal Empire), places of relaxation and recreation with friends and family. This park was lifeless and brought with it a feeling of dread and despair, with bones lying around on the numerous benches or in the ruined foals’ playground.

“Oh, be careful. There are Mole-rats here,” Appletart warned.

“M-mole-rats?” I repeated as the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.

“Those asshole Raiders brought a bunch with them for some reason, but a few escaped and have been breeding like crazy. So now we got a rodent problem here in town,” The young mare explained. “The little buggers like to pop up just about anywhere, especially if there are large portions of open soil like this.”

I began to sweat with anxiety and looked everywhere I could as we followed Appletart. Mole-rats, like mice and rats, were things that terrified me because of my phobia. If these Mole-rats were anything like the Giant Rats I’ve seen back over in the Marejave, then I’m not going to have a good day.

Suddenly, there was an explosion of dirt in front of us and when the dust settled, there was a large pink skinned creature that had small eyes but huge teeth snarling at us. I felt my limbs lock up and my eyes widen in terror at the sight of the medium dog-sized Mole-rat.

“Ahh shit!” Appletart cursed before she quickly used her magic to grab the rat in her telekinetic force and snapped its neck with a quick, if somewhat violent jerk. “I hope it didn’t bring its friends,” She grumbled as she tossed the limp body of the rodent aside.

Unfortunately, we weren’t that lucky as almost instantaneously after she killed the first one, half a dozen more burst up from holes all around us. One of them happened to burst up right in front of me. I screamed in terror, stomped it to death before it could react to me and ran for the park exit up ahead. I cried as I ran, cursing how ugly the rats were and how much I hated them for how much they terrified me.

“Crystal… Crystal, stop, please. I can’t hold on,” Xian whimpered tearily in a small scared voice as I galloped in fright for the park exit. Behind me I could hear shouts and gun fire, energy discharges from plasma weapons, and the cries of pain from the mutated rodents as Fruity and Appletart took care of them. “Mummy please!” Xian begged.

Hearing the teary whimper of the young filly calling me “Mummy” again made me stop in my tracks. I looked back to see the young filly desperately trying to stay on my back, despite my medical box and shotgun acting like an uncomfortable seat. Now that I had stopped, she was able to sit herself back comfortably between my wings and hugged against herself to my neck again. “I… I’m so sorry Xian. Rodents, they… scare me, more than anything.”

Xian blinked a couple of times while she processed this before she hugged the back of my neck and gently rubbed her cheek into my mane. “It’s… it’s ok mummy, we all get, um,” She paused while she mumbled the world in zebrican a few times before saying it in equestrian. “Scared.”

“Why the hell did you run away like that?!” Appletart yelled at me as she and Fruity rejoined us. She wasn’t happy at all, and looked to have some scratches on her cheek and on her armour. “We could have seriously used your help back there!”

“I…” I began only to falter under her scrutiny.

“Hey, calm the fuck down!” Fruity told her. “She has a phobia of rodents, anything like them freak her out!” He flared his wings and stood in front of me protectively. “How would you feel if your greatest fear just suddenly showed up huh?”

“Whatever,” She grunted and pushed passed us, giving Fruity a shove with her shoulder as she pushed passed him. “C’mon. We’re nearly there.”

“Thank you,” I smiled warmly up to Fruity.

He gently nuzzled me. “Anytime Crys,” He said with a smile before he began to follow our angry unicorn companion. I quickly hurried along with Xian clinging to my neck.

We followed Appletart, cutting through alleyways when we could and walking up some streets until we came to a road that led to a street that curled around in the shape of a crescent. Behind the street was the looming mountain, which by this point in the day, casted the whole region of the town in shadow. On the street corner was a small sign bolted to bent post that read “Crescent Road”.

“We’re here,” I smiled. “Thank you.”

The young mare just grunted, which made my ears wilt. I looked down and away from her because I felt like I had really upset her when I ran scared by the Mole-rats.

“Oh, come on, lighten up,” Fruity groaned at her. “Why do you get so pissed off all the time?”

She just sneered at him and began to continue onwards onto Crescent Road.

I began to replay all the interactions we had with the young mare. Sure, not all of them had been pleasant, but she seemed to get really angry at the mention of Raiders. She had been thrust into this world as a little foal from a similar world that I grew up in. The anger brought up when Raiders were mentioned I could easily assume were her feelings towards them for what they did to her, her stable, her mother and everypony she ever knew. I’m no expert, but if she was this easy to anger and her anger could easily be triggered by Raiders in any form, then I assumed that she never dealt with her grief and had let her pain and anger fester into something bad.

“Appletart, you… you gotta let go of this hate you feel for Raiders,” I said, taking a gamble on my hunch.

She stopped and spun around, her face twisted into an angry sneer.

“What the fuck do you know huh?” She demanded. “What does a fucking robot know about my pain?”

“Hey, hey, hey, calm down,” Fruity said trying to defuse the situation.

“I think I understand you better than you know…” I then went on to tell her how I woke up in this world. How I found out I hadn’t been asleep for five years but a hundred and ninety-five. How like her, I’ve lost everypony I’ve ever known. To top it all off, I was completely clueless as to why this was done to me. I could understand the feeling of pain and anger as I’ve felt it myself, but I did not let it fester.

She looked at me with wide thoughtful eyes, like she was seeing me again for the first time.

“Believe us Appletart. Blind anger will you get nowhere in the wasteland,” Fruity said softly.

I nodded in agreement. “You have to let that anger go before it’ll lead you into a hole that you’ll never get out of.”

She looked a little conflicted before all our attention was captured by a large explosion somewhere deep in the town. A large plume of smoke rose into the air and began to flow across the town, carried by the winds.

“That was Check Point 5!” Appletart gaped.

“*bzzt* Initiate Appletart, do you read, over?”

The young white mare’s eyes lit up and a happy smile, a genuine smile, appeared on her lips as she raised her PipBuck to her mouth to use the broadcaster. “I read you, Paladin Nightingale.”

“*bzzt* Oh thank the maker. I’ve been trying to contact you all afternoon. Where the fuck have you been?” The electronic female voice demanded, although it sounded relieved to know she was ok.

“I…” She stopped as she looked at me, Fruity and Xian on my back. It made me wonder if she was going to tell her superior about us, then she continued. “I triggered a Foal Stroller Bomb and lost my ear communicator,” she explained.

“*bzzt*Damn it Appletart, do you know rare those things are? … you know what, nevermind. I’ll grill your ass later. Get your albino flank to Check Point 5. We have a Raider incursion, ASAP!”

“Yes mother,” She said quietly to herself. “Um, alright. Ugh, I need to go, like now!”

“It’s ok. You got us to the street we needed to find. We’ll find our way out once we’ve found what we’re looking for,” I told her. “And thank you, not just for leading us here, but for not exposing us. You had the opportunity.”

She sighed. “Like I said earlier, I couldn’t hurt the filly,” I smiled warmly at that. “Ok, stand back,” She told us.

We took a step back as she began to channel magic into her horn. She closed her eyes while she concentrated and soon a ball of concentrated magic began to form at the tip of her horn. The ball of shimmering white magic grew and grew until it was the size of a golf ball. It wavered and flickered, showing it was unstable.

“What is that?” I asked.

“I gotta look like a bomb hit me,” She told us. “This is just a little trick somepony showed me,” She then sent a small spark into the ball of magic, causing it to explode. The small blast left her face covered in soot and her mane blown back and slightly singed. “Ow! Forgot to move it away from me.”

Fruity chuckled. “Heh, now you do look like a bomb hit you.”

“Ok good. Well, sorry for getting mad at you but I really need to jet. See ya.” And with that, the young unicorn Ranger galloped off as fast as she could to where she was needed.

“Well, she was certainly something,” Fruity commented as we watched her disappear into the town.

“Yeah. I hope she’ll be ok,” I said, feeling for the young mare.

“Well she is a Steel Ranger. I think she’ll be fine, but we aren’t getting owt done just standing here. Where are we supposed to go again?” Fruity asked.

“Err… Oh right,” I lifted a wing so I could get to a pocket, leaned down and plucked Dr Pear’s journal from my pocket. Then I took the book with my wing and opened it to the marked page with the address. “Ah here we go. Err, 7 Crescent Road.”

“Well that house there is number one,” Fruity said as he pointed to a house that was just a shell. Its roof had fallen inside, collapsing all its internal structure.

“That’s not promising,” I sighed. “Well, number seven will be on the same side. How it usually worked was there were houses with even numbers on one side of the street and on the other were the odd numbers.”

Fruity nodded as he began to follow the street. We walked past number three, then five, until we stopped at number seven and turned to face it. We were surprised as the house was a modest two stories, stone brick house that actually looked very normal, considering Colonel Ironside was the head of the Espionage Department of the M.o.A. There were however two worrying signs. One, the roof was partially collapsed, and through the windows of the upstairs it looked like the ceiling had all collapsed due to the roof beginning to fall through. Two, the front door was wide open, not because it had been opened and left open, but because it was broken and it looked like somepony had booted it down.

“It looks like somepony has been here already,” I pointed out with the door and the hoof scratch marks on the floor as we approached the front door.

“Considering who lived here, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Steel Rangers checked this place out.”

I sighed as we entered the old run-down house. “I hope this wasn’t a wasted journey.”

The front door gave us access to a hall that held the stairs. The upstairs was unfortunately blocked off by debris, leaving us with three other doors. One was open and led into the kitchen, which from the hallway looked to be full of dirt and severely rusted appliances. The second door we could see was closed and against the wall with the stairs, and had “WC” on the door. The last door was open too, and that led into a rather spacious living room with a couple of large settees that could be seen.

“I’ll check the kitchen and the basement,” Fruity said as he nodded to the kitchen. “If we split up and search the house together, we should find something sooner rather than later, and it’ll be better if we find something sooner before some tin cans show up.”

I nodded. “Alright. I guess Xian and I will take the living room and back room,” I said and turned for the door to the downstairs toilet. “But first I need to check the damage I’ve received.”

He nodded before leaning over and gently kissing my cheek, which made me blush bright red and giggle like a schoolfilly. “Good luck Crys,” He said with a smile before he headed off into the kitchen.

I rubbed my cheek for a moment before I noticed that Xian was staring at me from my back. When she realised I had noticed, she smiled and giggled. “He likes you.”

“Oh hush.” I smiled warmly and then giggled along with her as we approached the small bathroom and opened the door. The room was small, only big enough for a toilet and a sink with a mirror above it, nothing more. I entered the small room and turned the face the mirror, which was still intact but covered in decades of grime. With a quick glance around the room, I found a washcloth hung on a metal ring next to the sink and toilet. With my wing, I plucked the dirty rag up and used it to clear the grime from the middle of the mirror to the point it became reflective once more. I gulped with nervousness as I slowly turned my head from the left so I could reveal the damage. What I saw made me gasp.

“Oh, sweet Luna!” I squeaked, the electronic buzz even more noticeable inside this small room.

A large portion of the right side of my face had been blown/ripped away, slightly burned around the edges. How my stetson hat managed to stay on my head I have no idea. Even my Coco Pommel Noir Coat’s collar on the right side had been burnt and torn. I stared with a wide eye as I took in the details of the scratched and burned flesh around the large wound, and the blooded metal of my endoskeleton’s cranium. The metal was either a dull grey or a deep grey in colour. My nose and mouth were largely unaffected, thankfully, but I could see the connection between my jaw and my skull. There was even a control rod that helped to open and close my mouth alongside my equine teeth. Above the hole in my cheek was my eye socket. The metal there was the deep grey colour, and the socket took up most of the damaged area. It was deep, like any eye socket should be since it would need to hold your eye, but what sat inside staring right back at me was a mechanical eye with an electric blue glow. I remembered when I used to have red eyes. Were these blue ones the result of the upgrade? My body shuddered at the mere thought of the traumatic experience that upgrade was associated with.

“I hope this heals quick. I don’t want ponies to see me like this,” I whimpered. As if it heard me, I noticed a faint pink glow appear around the damaged tissue, and a warmth grow in my chest. I gently pressed a hoof to my chest and I could feel the magic of the regeneration talisman pulsate. I supposed the talisman didn’t activate until now because we were in the presence of an unknown party. Sure, we got to know Appletart but if it wasn’t for Xian being with us, she would have attacked or tried to bring in her power-armoured comrades.

Satisfied that the talisman had begun to reconstruct my face, we left the small bathroom and entered the living room, where the first thing we saw was the skeleton slumped over on one of the couches. It was wearing a tattered (by age) sun dress, which told me it was once a mare. With the way it was slumped over to one side, and that the couch was next to an end table with a lamp and phone on it, I suspected the mare was waiting for a call when she died. My eyes then widened in realisation when it clicked that this was a skeleton of a mare inside the home of Colonel Ironside. Was this a wife or an older daughter?

I picked Xian off my back and gently laid a wing over her eyes, to hopefully shield her young innocent eyes from the death in the room. As I leaned in close to see if I could find something to clue me into the skeleton’s identity, I noticed that there was a strange lumpy mass in the stomach region of the sun dress. Curious, I grasped the skirt with a hoof and gently began to lift. I made sure to keep my wing over Xian’s eyes to prevent her from seeing anything bad, and thank the goddesses I did. Because when I lifted the dress, I let out a shriek and dropped the fabric. Under the dress, there was a tiny skeleton curled up. This mare was pregnant when she died. I couldn’t believe this. She was heavy with foal, waiting to hear from Ironside presumably, when she died from the bombs, slumped near the phone. How could the heartless bastard not have seen to his own family’s safety, especially when there was a Stable just in the mountain side above them?

I asked Xian to wait by the door and sit looking out into the hall, so that she didn’t have to look at the skeleton. I didn’t want her to see it now, especially after what I found. I was still in shock over the revelation. Happy that Xian was sat by the door, I looked around the room. I checked the drawers in the coffee table, the sideboard, the corner unit where the broken television sat, even in the bookshelves that lined the back all. Sadly, I didn’t find anything that would point me in the direction of Irionside.

“Why is it so hard to find something you’re looking for?” I whined.

I heard a sneeze from the door and turned my head to check on Xian. The young filly sat gently rubbing at her nose, but from my position in the back corner, I could see the end table from a different angle while I looked at Xian. I noticed a hint of pink under the hoof of the skeleton. I gulped as I approached the table and gently reached out with a wing.

“I’m so sorry,” I said to the skeleton as I used my wing to gently nudge the bony leg off the pink object, which turned out to be a holotape with the word “Sorry” written on it.

With nothing else check in this room, I opened my PipBuck’s holotape player, slipped in the new holotape and pressed play. The voice of a mare that sounded upset began to pour out of my PipBuck’s speakers.

“To my hard-working husband. I’m terribly sorry. I know you work hard for Equestria, and have to travel all over for your work with the M.o.A. I didn’t mean to fight with you when you told me that you had to oversee the M.o.A setting up a secret observation post underneath Meadowlark Hill all the way in the Marejave. I was just so looking forward to spending some time with beloved husband.

I hope you can forgive me and that you’ll be home in time for our foal’s birth.

I love you.”

The tape ended with the mare sounding like she was about to cry, which was very upsetting. It sounded like they had an argument, and that he left the house and didn’t come back, leaving her heartbroken. Poor mare. But, more importantly, I think we just got our location.

“FRUITY!” I yelled as loudly as I could to get my coltfriend’s attention.

There was a crash from below, but after a few thuds and some curse words, my duster-wearing purple pegasus friend was in the living room. “What is it, what’s wrong?” He gasped out while taking in large gulps of air as he tried to calm down from his mad dash to get to me.

I had to bite my lip to not snicker. Once I was sure I wouldn’t crack, I told him of my find.

“You really think that’s the place?” He asked with a raised brow.

“I do. Meadowlark Hill was a place my parents used to take me for vacation when we weren’t going to the Crystal Empire. It was ideal camp grounds and it was out of the way, plus it was close to the MASA HQ, which would explain how I-02 IS found us so quickly,” I explained. “He had tracked us to the MASA first, if you remember those security doors, and then there was my feeling of being watched when we made it to the suburbs of Las Pegasus.”

He nodded as he had a look of remembrance. “That makes sense,” He agreed.

“Ok, well. I guess we’re off to the Marejave again.”

“Oh joy,” He said sarcastically.

“I’m sure we can find you some Factor 50 Suncream somewhere for you,” I joked.

He smiled with a light chuckle. “Alright then, let’s get out of here.”

I nodded and picked up Xian again. Once I made sure she was safely on my back, we left the house and quickly began to retrace our steps through the route we took.

We stopped at each corner we came to so that we could peer around it and make sure it was safe to proceed. We did this for what felt like hours until we eventually made it to the large six story town hall, which made us stop because when we followed Appletart we never came close to the old building.

“Bollocks. I think we took a wrong turn somewhere,” Fruity exclaimed.

“Oh no. We better figure out where we are and fast,” I urged.

“Won’t it be easier if we find that chimney of the mill we passed when we entered the town?”

“It would act as a waypoint,” I agreed.

“Ok. Let’s move before we get spotted by any of those soup cans,” Fruity grumbled.

Unfortunately, when I looked up I caught sight of three power armoured Steel Rangers in a window reflection as they approached from behind.

“*Gulp* Too late,” I said nervously when the heavy thuds of the Rangers began to shake the ground.

“Well, well, well. What do we have here?” One of the Rangers asked as he saw us.

“Looks like a pair of flying rats,” Another mocked.

Fruity turned around with a glare. “Don’t you cunts ever have any respect?”

They all looked at each other and then laughed. “To ponies like you, no!” The third one laughed.

Fruity growled, his wings extending and revealing his plasma battlesaddle.

“Fruity, don’t aggravate them,” I whimpered while I still had my back to them.

“HEY!” The Ranger in the middle, presumably the leader, of the three called to me. “Turn around.”

I gulped but didn’t move.

I heard a click and a hum of a motor. In the reflection, I saw the minigun on his battlesaddle begin to spin.

I whimpered and turned around, but kept my head turned so the right side of my damaged face was facing away from them.

“She’s a Luna damned Stripe!” One of the Rangers called out with a scoff.

“I’ve never seen a winged Stripe before,” Another Ranger said in confusion before he scoffed as well. “It doesn’t matter. A Stripe’s a Stripe.”

I quickly picked Xian off my back with my tail and put her down in the floor behind us in an attempt to shield her, but I didn’t think it’d be of much use. Each Steel Ranger was equipped with miniguns or rocket launchers, and they were all aimed at us.

“F-Fruity,” I whimpered, terrified that this was the end for us.

Fruity stepped close to me and wrapped his wing around me in a hug while he stared at the Rangers defiantly.

“You’re all a bunch of twats,” Fruity sneered angrily at them.

“Any last words rodents?” The lead Ranger asked as the miniguns spun to firing speed.

Despite my threat warning flashing away like crazy in my vision, my ear twitched when the sound of breaking roof tiles tickled my hearing. The sound had come from directly above us, and before either Fruity and I or the Rangers could react, something large and heavy crashed down on the lead Ranger and crushed him. I heard his armour collapse and give way to the velocity of the object’s impact, along with multiple bones. The sudden shock had stopped the other two from using their weapons as they stared at the dust cloud where their leader had once stood. We all stared and waited for the dust to settle, but I could see through the dust better than most, and my heartrate began to accelerate with dread at what rose up and stood on top of the crushed Ranger.

“What the fuck just happened?” One of the other two Rangers shouted in demand.

Suddenly, a strong breeze blew through the area and carried the dust away with it. The two remaining Rangers gasped in surprise as a skeletal robot now stood on their dead comrade.

“Oh shit, it’s one of those spy robots!” A Ranger shouted.

Before any of the two Rangers could react, the scorched armoured robot that we all recognised turned to face one of the Rangers, while at the same time grabbing the other around his neck with his nano-fibre tail. I-02 IS then swiftly punched the Ranger with the point of his hoof in the neck, crumpling the armour plates and collapsing his windpipe, sending the Ranger gasping for breath as he began to choke to death. With one Ranger dealt with, the robot then pulled with his tail, making the other horrified Ranger stumble forward, only to receive a precision hind hoof strike to his neck doing the same thing. It was horrible to see the two armoured ponies fall over, gasping for breath before slowly going still as they died from oxygen deprivation.

“There is no way! We destroyed you!” Fruity gaped as I-02 IS turned to face us, his red glowing eyes landing on us.

“Are you two alright?” He asked softly, which through us both for a loop as we were not expecting the first thing for him to ask would be about our safety.

“Wait, what?” I squeaked.

“Are you alright?” He repeated as he approached.

“Whoa there buddy, back up!” Fruity warned as he primed his battlesaddle.

Again, to our surprise, he stopped.

“I’m not going to let you try and take me away like last time I-02 IS!” I said while I flared my wings, grabbed my modified Lucky 13 from its holster with my tail, and pointed it at him.

“My name is Nexus and you misunderstand. I am not here to capture you, but to help you,” He declared.

“Come again?” Fruity asked in surprise.

“I would be happy to explain, but it would be best if we make our leave,” Nexus suggested. “The Steel Rangers will send a task force to investigate the sudden disappearance of three of their own.”

“Do you know a way back to the mill?” Fruity asked to which the machine nodded. “Can you lead us back out that way?”

“Of course.” He got up and moved around us to begin leading us. “Please follow closely,” He said as he began to move at a brisk pace.

As the machine began to take the lead, Fruity leaned over and whispered in my ear. “What do you think? Can we trust it?”

“I don’t know, but we need to get out of this town. That is our priority right now, but once we are at a safe distance away we can interrogate him,” I whispered back. “Xian honey. Stay close to me while we follow Nexus out of town, ok?” I said the young filly. Xian nodded and she fell in step with me, walking very close to my side as we all followed behind the robot.

The machine was very quick, but moved at a speed we could keep up with. While being behind him, I could see his head flicking slightly from side to side as we came to corners and intersections. He was scanning for threats ahead of us. After another half an hour of dodging Steel Ranger patrols, which were largely due to his sensory system, we managed to leave the town by the mill we entered by, and hurriedly continued down the road towards the truck that we used as shelter the previous night.

By the time we made it back to the old Starlight Industries truck, the sun had begun its descent and the world around us had started to darken.

“Today was quite eventful, wasn’t it?” Fruity said as he sat down inside the trailer. I nodded in agreement as Xian laid down on one of the sleeping bags with a yawn.

“Now that we’re safe…” I turned to Nexus with Lucky 13 pointed right at him. “How the fuck did you survive that Micro-Mana detonation, and how do we know you are not just luring me into a false sense of security?” I demanded.

The machine eyed my revolver for a moment, then turned to Fruity as he stood up and primed his dual plasma battlesaddle. He couldn’t show it without any skin but I could feel his nervousness as he gazed at the glowing green energized weapons.

“I survived because my system performed an emergency shutdown before the extreme energy surge could cause damage to my CPU core. When I rebooted, I found my core system had been altered slightly. I originally followed my programming, but then I began to observe ponies from a distance, learn about emotion, and finally observe you after finding you again close to Bonbon Springs. The more I observed you, the more I began to wonder and question my directive, and in turn, what the end result meant for you. In the end, I decided that I didn’t want to kill you because I learned that killing innocents is wrong, and I do not wish to do wrong. Henceforth, I decided to at least act on my secondary objective, which was to ensure your safety. You may recall the Hellhound that was killed in front of you, as well as Units 1 and 2 getting distracted by breaking windows in the Manehattan Impact Crater,” He explained.

I gaped as I took in all he said. “That was you that saved us?” I squeaked.

He nodded his head and pulled out a crude, wood and metal rifle that looked like it was put together by somepony who had a bunch of junk lying around. “Despite its crude appearance, it is a very effective weapon. In all honesty, it is the very weapon that shot you down back in Manehattan. I am deeply sorry I didn’t get to him in time, but I did prevent his exit so that the Tenpony Tower guard could snipe him.”

Fruity then got up and approached the robot, his battlesaddle getting dangerously close to him. “How do we know you won’t just tell your maker where we are when we least expect it?” He demanded.

“When it became clear to him that I was no longer following his commands and was acting on my own accord, he disconnected me from the network. I am no longer tied to the Production Facility. I cannot interact with its systems if I wanted to,” Nexus replied, almost in a sad tone.

“Well, it’s a start… but I don’t think we can trust you just yet. Not entirely,” Fruity said. I nodded in agreement because I too felt that it was a little difficult to trust the machine that attempted to kill Fruity and capture me outside the door of Stable 16.

“I understand,” He said with a nod. “I would be happy to earn your trust, to prove I am not that same robot you remember.”

I had to admit to myself, Nexus certainly didn’t feel like I-02 IS. He didn’t act nor talk in the same manner as he once did. Maybe he did have a change of heart, so to speak, and had become his own pony.

“Well Nexus, thank you for offering to help us,” I said with a genuine smile to him. “And welcome to our little group.”

XXXXX

“Upgrade complete!” The electronic voice of Upgrade Station Alpha said as the door to the only functional chamber opened. Unit 3 exited with an antenna like horn, with a multi-coloured gem embedded at the tip, upon its forehead.

The machine turned and approached a metal table. It had the body of a young bright pink unicorn mare, with a dishevelled silvery mane and tail, strapped down to it. When the machine got near, the young mare opened her dull-almost lifeless eyes and began to struggle very weakly, causing the gold mind reader mesh to slip from atop her head.

“P-please. Let me go,” The young mare begged.

The machine looked down at the mare. It took notice that her cutiemark, a magic wand set atop a pair of stage curtains, was gone and had now appeared on the metal of the top of its robotic thighs.

“Hmm. This will not do,” The machine said in a perfect copy of her own voice. “It is good that you knew illusion magic, Miss Lulamoon,” The machine said as the robotic horn began to glow in bright cyan magic, and to the mare’s horror, the skeletal machine disappeared inside an illusion of herself. “There, much better. Now if you’ll excuse me Miss Lulamoon, I have some important business to attend to.” There was then a flick of telekinetic magic from the machine’s horn as it undid the straps that held the drained unicorn. “You are free to go.”

The young mare whimpered in exhaustion as she watched the machine hidden in an illusion of herself leave the facility. Leave with her magic and a copy of her mind, memories and experience. She tiredly looked down to her blank flanks and began to cry, seeing nothing but nothing. She was as good as dead now in the world of the Equestrian Wasteland, with no means of protecting herself from a hungry predator.

Chapter 16: A New Direction

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Fallout Equestria: Influx

Chapter 16: A New Direction

The weather was overcast and gloomy as we headed back towards Manehattan, but at least it wasn’t raining. Xian stayed very close to me as we walked down the road because she was nervous about our newest companion. To tell the truth, so was I. Nexus was certainly something to be nervous about, considering he was a machine and once tried to kill us.

“So chromedome, what can you tell us about the Production Facility?” Fruity asked from the head of the group.

The scorched armoured machine tilted his skeletal head slightly. “Why would you want to know about that place?” He replied with his own question.

“My quest to find out about what happened to me a hundred and ninety-five years ago leads inside there. Why this Colonel Ironside tricked me into signing my body over to the MoA and having me turned into this artificial being,” I said darkly. It made me angry to think of how I was tricked into giving up my body so that my life could be stolen.

The machine looked at me with its glowing red eyes for a moment before it faced forward again while we continued onwards. “Hmm. Well, it would be suicide to go there,” He said with an electronic sound that I supposed was a sigh.

“How come tin pony?” Fruity asked.

“Ugh…”

XXXXX

Unit-1000 looked up as an internal alert went off. The machine closed its eyes as it looked into the network it was connected to in order to find the cause of the alert. It found that three Mark 2 units were still active. One of them was Unit-1002 (previously known as, I-02 IS), and it was in close proximity to I-01. The machine opened its eyes and tilted its head, confused and surprised to see the two machines together.

“This must be reported.”

The machine immediately connected itself with Colonel Ironside.

“What is it Unit-1000?” The Colonel asked gruffly through the connection.

“Your vessel has made contact with I-01 outside of Manehattan,” Unit-1000 stated emotionlessly.

“WHAT?!” Ironside demanded angrily.

“It appears to be travelling with it now and they are conversing,” The machine said while it continued to monitor the conversation.

“Where are they going, and what is that traitorous machine telling them?” Ironside demanded.

“It appears your prediction came true. I-01 is seeking out the Production Facility and Unit-1002 is about to reveal information about said facility.”

This alarmed Colonel Ironside. “No! Stop him! You have extra privileges because of what you were designed for. Force access to him, erase his memory and shut him down!” The Colonel commanded.

“Affirmative,” Unit-1000 said before it cut its connection with Ironside and concentrated on its new task. The machine used the access codes it was pre-programmed with to gain access to Unit-1002’s CPU Core. Once it was connected, it began to search through the files and folders for its memory files. Once it found all the data related to the Production Facility, Unit-1000 began to delete them.

XXXXX

Nexus suddenly found that he was having trouble recalling what he remembered about the facility. Each time he tried to pull up a memory, it seemed to fade until it disappeared into nothingness, like it never existed.

“I… I am having trouble remembering,” He said with worry in his voice as he continued to search his memories.

He soon found a clear memory. He could clearly see himself standing before the large computer screen, with the wireframe face of Colonel Ironside on the monitor, his gruff deep voice telling him to seek out I-01. But as he held onto that memory, he felt something surround it, compress it and then made it fade away into nothing. After that, like before, he couldn’t remember it ever taking place. It worried him as more and more memories faded away. He came to only one conclusion: he was under a mental attack.

“Are you alright?” Crystal asked, her face twisted into worry for the machine.

“Something is deleting my memories,” Nexus cried fearfully. “I-I need to stop it!” He quickly engaged his emergency shutdown system. Within moments, the light from his eyes faded and he shuddered to a complete halt, standing motionless like a statue as he powered down.

“The hell just happened?” Fruity asked in annoyance.

“He just shut himself down. He said something was attacking his memory,” Crystal replied in shock, still with worry in her voice.

The purple pegasus rolled his eyes. “He’s just gonna slow us down. We should just leave him.”

Crystal gasped in shock at her coltfriend’s behaviour towards the machine. “Fruity, what’s gotten into you?”

“I dunno. Maybe because this guy tried to kill us and I don’t trust him as far as I can throw him.”

Crystal opened her mouth to reply but a feminine voice from Nexus stopped her.

Safe Mode Reboot, Engaged,” It said before the light returned to Nexus’s eyes. He sagged slightly as power returned to his locked-up limbs.

“Are you ok?” Crystal asked, worry still tinging her voice as she turned her attention to the robot.

“Yes. I am now in Safe Mode. Only the minimal amount of required systems is online to ensure I can operate, whereas everything else is offline. I believe Unit-1000 was responsible since it has abilities we don’t. Unfortunately, I have lost all my memory from before waking up in front of the door to Stable 16,” He said sadly.

“What good are you if you can’t tell us anything?” Fruity spat.

“Fruity, that’s enough,” I groaned. “Nexus, if you can’t remember anything of the facility, how come you knew it was this Unit-1000 that attacked you?” I asked him.

“I may have lost my memory of past events, but I still have a database of constructed Mark 2 Units. Just the same as your intelligence chip regarding Equestrian weaponry,” He explained.

“I guess that makes sense, but how did it get into you?” She asked with a tilt of her head.

“We all have a device built into us that would enable us to be tracked and have updates broadcasted to us. I believe it used this device to enter my memory,” He explained.

“What’s this device, and if we all have it, why hasn’t Unit-1000 used it to do something to me?” Crystal probed.

“That would be our Signal Transmitter,” He began to explain. “It enables instantaneous communication with any in-range unit, but for Unit-1000 it can connect to a network where it can easily find and connect to any unit on the field. I must have still been on the network, though I don’t know without my memories. Anyway, as for you, it would not have been able to have interacted with you because your Signal Transmitter is non-functional.”

“Non-functional?” Fruity asked surprised.

“From what I can remember after Stable 16, the only way to track you was following your fluctuating power core signal. Otherwise it would have been a simple case of homing in on your unique signal, but you never transmitted one. I can only assume it got damaged, and for whatever reason your auto-repair system has failed to either repair or detect it.”

Crystal blinked in surprise regarding the newfound information about a signal transmitter.

“So what are you going to do now?” Fruity asked.

“While in safe mode, I do not have to worry about Unit-1000 trying to delete me but I cannot risk it trying again, so I will disable my transmitter. That way I will not be able to be tracked or detected on the network, so Unit-1000 would not be able to interact with me again,” Nexus then sat down. “I’ll be but a moment while I disable this hardware.”

XXXXX

Unable to comply!” An electronic deep male voice said in alert suddenly. “Signal lost!”

Unit-1000 looked up to the monitor it had been using as a proxy while it sifted through folder after folder, file after file within Unit-1002’s memory for anything related to the Production Facility and deleted it. It had successfully managed to erase all memory files on the facility before suddenly losing its connection with the machine.

The tall slender robot tilted its head in actual confusion as it delved into its network. Where there was once a tag for Unit-1002 there was now nothing. The machine was gone. It could still detect the unresponsive Unit-2 and the newly upgraded Unit-3, but Unit-1002 was nowhere to be seen. To be sure it hadn’t suffered a system crash, it ran a diagnostic on itself and found that it was one hundred percent operational. Thus it came to the conclusion that somehow, Unit-1002 had managed to lock it out and prevented its memory erasure and termination.

After letting out an electronic sigh of disappointment it contacted its master. “Colonel sir. I was unable to complete my task. Unit-1002 managed to interrupt my deletion process and now I can no longer detect it on the network.”

The wireframe face of Colonel Ironside appeared on the monitor in front of Unit-1002, and he didn’t look happy at all as he scowled at his ultimate creation. “I am disappointed in you Unit-1000. You failed me in such a simple task for your abilities. Please tell me you at least succeeded in wiping its memory,” He demanded while still keeping his scowl.

“Unfortunately, I was not. I was, however, able to erase everything on the Production Facility.”

Ironside sighed deeply. “At least we don’t have to worry about the traitorous machine revealing those secrets.”

XXXXX

I watched as Nexus rebooted himself for the second time. This time, he was back to full operational status minus the functionality of his Signal Transmitter. I just hope it did the trick. I’d hate for him to lose himself in such a way.

“There. Signal Transmitter is offline. That should do it,” He said as he stood back up straight again.

“Let’s hope so,” I agreed as we continued to walk down the road back to Manehattan.

As the towering monoliths of Manehattan came into view, the sun had begun to set. The tall, ruined structures gave the once majestic city a dead look to it, especially in the fading light along with the sickly green glow from the northern area of the city.

“We’re almost there,” I cheered with joy. I was happy to be back in familiar territory after our ordeal in Pondale.

“I dunno if we’ll be able to make it back to the tower before the Bloodwings come out though,” Fruity said with worry.

Xian hugged my foreleg as she whimpered at the fearsome name. I gently stroked her head for reassurance before continuing to walk. “I’m sure we can make it if we fly.”

“What about metal head here?” Fruity asked with a jerk of a wing to indicate Nexus.

“I’ve been in Manehattan long enough to understand the dangers of Bloodwings from following and observing you. If you need to fly to the tower before they come out then go ahead. I will be fine, for I am made of a light weight titanium alloy.”

I turned to him. “Are you sure you’ll be ok?” I asked with worry.

“Do not worry for me. You have a young foal to protect which will take priority,” He said with a nod. “I’ll follow behind you from the ground.”

I nodded back and then gently lifted Xian up onto my back between my wings. “Hold on tight now sweetie. We’re going to be flying and we’ll be flying fast to avoid danger, so please, hold on tightly ok?”

The young filly nodded as she hugged herself to the back of my neck and wrapped her small forelegs around it. Fruity and I exchanged a look before we both took off into the air, flying low to avoid being targets for snipers and high enough that we didn’t run the risk of crashing into lampposts or traffic lights. While we flew through the streets on our way towards Tenpony Tower, I took a quick glance back and saw Nexus running at an inpony speed behind us. I smiled slightly at knowing his enhanced robotic strength made him quite agile.

Flying low and dangerously. Now this is more like it,” The voice in the back head said, sounding appreciative of the way I was flying for once.

What are you, some kind of thrill seeker?” I mentally asked the voice.

Actually, yeah I was, but you might want to watch where the fuck you’re going and not get distracted while flying,” The voice snarked.

I focused back on my flight path ahead of me and immediately banked to the right to avoid a lamppost.

“That was a close one! If you hit that at this speed you would likely be brown bread!” Fruity yelled over the wind.

Again with the slang. He must have meant something bad with that phrase because his expression was of pure seriousness.

We flew up and over onto the elevated railway that connected to Tenpony Tower, and began to fly low to the rails toward the tower. The sky had grown dark by now, but still retained enough light to deter the Bloodwings. Floodlights bursted to life as we came within fifty feet of the platform. The whole station and the stretch of railway before the platform was illuminated in bright white light.

“I can’t see! Too bright!” Fruity cried as he threw up his forelegs to block out the light while simultaneously lost control of his flight from the shock of the sudden illumination.

When the lights came on, I quickly closed my eye but my exposed right optical unit took the flash in its entirety. I suffered a mild blindness that lasted for just a moment before my synthetic vision adapted to the harsh lighting.

“Non-hostile!” Shouted somepony from the platform.

“Incoming!” Another shouted as Fruity, unable to recover his flight, crashed onto the platform and slid across the floor before he was stopped by Slick.

I flapped my wings to slow my forward momentum, and then hovered down to the platform to perform a gentle landing. Once all four hooves were on solid concrete, I stopped flapping my wings and sighed with relief.

“Welcome back you three. I hope your trip was successful,” Slick said as he helped Fruity to his hooves.

“Thank you and it was,” I said with a smile. Now that we were on the ground, Xian hopped off my back and stood close to my side.

“That’s good…” He began but when he looked at me, his eyes bugged out of his head. Suddenly, I found all the guns from Slick and each of the platform guards pointed at me. “What in the fuck are you?” He growled threateningly.

I was taken aback from the sudden change in demeaner, but I also instinctively flared my wings and stood in front of Xian to shield her.

“I…I don’t understand. What’s wrong?” I asked nervously.

“Crystal, your eye,” Fruity whispered as he approached me with a pained groan.

I groaned at my stupidity for forgetting about my injury. The flesh over my cheek had regenerated enough to close the hole, but there was still an indentation that the regeneration still needed to fill in, and my eye was still fully exposed.

“I guess there is no point in hiding this from you now is there? But please believe me, I am still the mare you’ve all known these past few weeks,” I pleaded before I sighed and gave him a brief rundown of what I was.

He grumbled angrily. “Can’t believe you’ve been a robot this whole time,” He marched to one side of the platform to the next. He then snorted. “I’m sorry but I can’t let you in. You being a zebra was bad enough but them seeing you as a robot coated in flesh will cause a horrible uproar and probably a riot.”

“Oh come on dude,” Fruity protested.

There was suddenly a loud shriek from out in the city that cut off any further protests. Looking out into the city, we could see that the sun had set enough that it was almost completely dark, dark enough that streams of Bloodwings began to fly out into the sky from their numerous holes.

“Oh no! Nexus is still out there,” I said, actually feeling concern for the robot.

“He’s got no blood or flesh. They should ignore him,” Fruity said before he turned back to Slick. “C’mon dude, you gotta let us back in. You can’t expect us to bunk out here all night, especially with the filly and those giant flying rats.”

“If ponies see her with that robotic eye, there’ll be a riot,” Slick argued back.

“Think of the kid dude.”

“Alright fine. I’ll contact DJ-PON3 and see what he says,” He grumbled as he turned and headed for the doors.

Boom! Boom!

“That was a 12gauge auto shotgun. He’s close,” I said before freezing for a moment as I realised my electronic brain could even identify gunshot sounds.

Suddenly the spotlight exploded, and the platform lost its protective bright light cover. The normal lights lit the platform okay, but it wouldn’t stop some Bloodwings.

“Xian, get inside where it’s safe!” I yelled as I pulled my lever-action shotgun off my back and stood defensively, ready to defend the platform. The filly whimpered as she ran to the double doors and hid inside.

“You Raider cunts!” A guard yelled before firing a shot from his sniper. “Celestia, I hate them bastards. This is the fifth time this month and we are running out of replacements.”

“We got bigger problems right now. We gotta hold this station until we can get a backup spotlight installed,” Slick told his team as he stood with his own combat rifle at the ready once he returned. “Or at least until this Nexus guy arrives.”

Fruity and I nodded in agreement, and we stood side by side close to the platform’s edge as we watched the darkness. Fruity pulled his firing bit up to his mouth as he primed his weapons. The dark city out in front of us was once again swarming with streams of black winged abominations all looking for prey to suck dry.

“Shoot anything that gets too close,” Slick ordered as he hunkered down behind a concrete divider. He used it to prop up his rifle and fired into the sky at the closest group of bats.

A large bat swooped down and extended its talons as if to grab something. The creature was aimed for a cream armoured guard, who stood close to the edge of the platform and had her back to the monster while she covered the left side of the platform. She wouldn’t see it coming. I was about to alert her when an ear-splitting boom erupted from the back of the platform, and a huge hole ripped open within the bat. I quickly turned my head to the source of the bang, and saw a guard grinning like an idiot while holding his massive sniper rifle with the barrel smoking.

“Celestia almighty, I nearly shat myself,” Fruity grumbled as we turned back in time to see the dead bat smash into the foot of the platform.

While we fired at any bat that we considered too close, I kept my eyes peeled for any signs of Nexus. A rather large bat managed to get through the shots fired at it and landed on the platform in front of me. It was a massive pony-sized thing. It resembled a Vampire Fruit Bat but a hundred times uglier and bigger.

“Crystal!” Fruity yelled in alarm.

I was scared. It was almost like being in front of that Hellhound again. However, I had a duty to uphold as guardian to Xian and despite how fearful these bats were, I would not let them get to her. The monstrous bat let out a hungry shriek before it threw its head down to bite me. As it opened its mouth, revealing two giant punctuating fangs, I shoved my lever-action shotgun into its mouth. The bat’s red eyes opened wide at the feeling of cold hard metal lodged in its throat and it stared down at me.

“You’re one ugly motherfucker,” I said before my nano-fibre tail tightened around the trigger. The 20gauge buckshot fired from within its throat and blew out the back of its head, killing the beast instantly and knocking the creature off the platform with the force of the blast.

“Oh thank Celestia! Well done Crystal,” Fruity sighed with relief.

I gave him a smile before I turned my attention back to the railway shrouded in darkness. While more gunshots and plasma bolts shot out into the air or took down more bats that got brave, I focused my attention on a pair of red lights.

“I see him, I SEE HIM!” I yelled.

“Alright ponies, keep it up. Once this Nexus guy gets here we’re all getting inside,” Slick ordered. “There are just way too many bats for us to handle with this much light.”

We kept up the deterrent gun fire, even going so far as to focus on the railway to give Nexus a clearer path. Within a few minutes, I could clearly see him as he came within a hundred feet of the station.

“Nexus, c’mon!” I called out to him. Suddenly, another large bat landed on the platform close to me. The sudden appearance and proximity of it scared the living tartarus out of me, and out of shock I jumped and fell onto my back. When I jumped, my tail swung around aimlessly and the shock made me squeeze the trigger, firing a shot. Almost half of the platform lighting dimmed with the accompanied sound of falling glass. My accidental shot had taken out one of the few remaining platform lights.

“Oh shit,” A guard groaned.

“Well this is just fucking fantastic,” Snarked another. “Just how I wanted to spend my evening.”

“Stop flapping your gums and shoot the damn bat!” Slick ordered as he fired at the bat on the platform.

I scooted away from the beast while it was kept busy by the guards and Fruity. This bat seemed more aware of what was going on. It was ducking and weaving as it attempted to dodge the bullets. It was taking hits but its movement was letting it dodge the easily noticeable plasma bolts.

“Fucking die already you overgrown flying rat!” A guard yelled as he pulled the trigger on his weapon. However, the bat was suddenly flattened under the weight of Nexus as he landed on it from behind. There was a metallic ping as the round deflected off the top of his titanium alloy head.

Nexus turned his skull-like head to the guard that was staring at him with wide eyes. “Please be more careful where you aim that thing. You could hurt somepony,” He chided softly.

“Yeah sure, alright,” The guard gaped at the robot.

“Alright everypony, inside now! With this little light we can’t hold the platform,” Slick ordered as he ran to the double doors, and with a double hind hoof kick he thrust the doors open instantly. “Inside, go go, go!”

Everypony quickly hurried inside. If they had dropped their gun or left something behind they left it as they raced to the open doors. Fruity and I quickly pulled ourselves together, and with Nexus following closely behind we entered the tower. Slick was the last pony still on the platform. He stood before the open doors and surveyed the platform quickly to be sure everypony was inside. With a nod, he turned around and began to approach the open doors.

“Slick behind you!” I screamed and fumbled to raise my shotgun. In my haste to chamber a round, I had accidentally caused it to jam and I quickly kept trying to jerk the lever to free it.

Slick turned around just in time to see the talons of a large bat come down on him.

“SLICK!” Fruity yelled as he tried to get passed guards that blocked him in the corridor. They too were fumbling around, trying to turn around and ready their weapons to help their chief of staff.

Slick went to raise his rifle to defend himself but he wasn’t fast enough. Large talons sunk into his flank and barrel, which made him scream in pain and drop his weapon. He looked into the corridor, at all of us trying desperately to untangle ourselves to try and help him. I could see the pain and fear in his eyes for that brief moment before there was a strong leathery beat and he was gone.

XXXXX

After the doors were sealed to prevent any bats from getting inside, the guard with the next highest rank reluctantly took over. He informed DJ-PON3 of what happened, including our arrival. We were soon told that the DJ wanted to see us all and the guards would escort us to prevent the tower’s inhabitants from getting in the way.

The elevator ride up to the penthouse suite felt like it took longer than usual. Maybe it was because we all felt down after the loss of Slick. Once we entered Silver’s apartment, he was there waiting for us and immediately asked us what happened. We told him of our late arrival with Nexus trailing behind, that if we arrived together we would all have likely been devoured by the Bloodwings. We also explained that a Raider somewhere sniped out the spotlight that put us in danger, which escalated into a Bloodwing attack, leading to Slick’s demise.

He thanked us for telling him what happened and said that he would soon do a broadcast in commemoration for Slick. He then asked us how our trip to Pondale went, and with less enthusiasm than usual, which was understandable considering what happened. We didn’t have the heart to go into the full details, so we told him everything in the briefest of ways. He seemed to understand, and we were allowed to go back to the rooms we had used previously.

I gently laid Xian down on the bed I had used and tucked the tired filly in. It didn’t take long before her breaths turned to quiet, cute little snores as she drifted off to sleep. I hoped that she would remain this innocent for years to come. It was a tall hope considering how bad this world was and how it could affect ponies in the long run. Fruity had certainly told me a couple of stories on how it could corrupt.

“I can’t believe he’s gone,” Fruity said sadly as he unceremoniously dumped his gear and duster into a corner.

“I know. He fought so bravely and made sure nopony was left behind,” I added while I took off my own gear and neatly put it together at the end of the bed Xian was sleeping on.

Fruity climbed onto the unoccupied bed and sat down by the headboard. I climbed up onto the bed with him and sat beside him, gently wrapping my forelegs around him in a comforting hug. He gave a weak smile as he returned the gesture.

“He was the first friend I made when I first came to Manehattan a couple of years ago,” He said sadly before he gave a sad chuckle. “Despite that asshole throwing my drunk ass out of the tower on a couple of occasions.”

“He certainly was a good pony,” I said as I thought back to my interactions with him. “He wasn’t discriminating towards me when we first arrived. He just thought about the tower in general and how everypony inside would react,”

“Reminiscing is a good way to cope with the loss,” Nexus said who stood by the window.

Fruity quickly raised his head with a baleful glare at the robot. “You can shut the fuck up. It’s your fault he’s dead.”

Nexus tilted his head and turned to regard us. “What brings you to this conclusion, Mr Fruity?”

“First of all, it’s just ‘Fruity’ you novelty condom head. Second, if you got here sooner he would still be alive,” He growled through gritted teeth.

I gently placed my forehooves onto Fruity’s shoulders and held him down. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, settle down Fruity! It’s not Nexus’s fault,” I defended before my ears dropped sadly. “If anything, I feel it could be my fault.”

Nexus tilted his head the other way, while Fruity’s eyes widened at my proclamation. “What? What do you mean?”

“I got surprised by a bat and accidently fired a shot when I fell over. I think it broke a light, and that’s why I think it could be my fault,” I explained.

“Accidents happen. It doesn’t matter if it was my fault or hers for the events that led to his demise. The fact is the Bloodwing is what killed him. A product of the wasteland,” Nexus said evenly.

Fruity grumbled but then sighed. “You’re right. It could have happened at any moment.”

I gently hugged him as he seemed to deflate, but I did notice he didn’t apologise for accusing Nexus for Slick’s death. We moved down until were laying together in bed, still facing each other despite the little room in the single bed.

“You gotta give him a break. He’s on our side now,” I whispered to Fruity quietly.

“I don’t trust him. Like I said earlier, he tried to kill us,” He replied just as quietly. I hoped Nexus couldn’t hear us whispering. “It’ll take more than conveniently showing up to save us to win me over.”

“Tomorrow we can find out when the train will next be here,” I said with a yawn.

“And once we return to the Marejave, we can finally find out the truth about what happened to you,” He said while he gave my cheek a gentle stroke with a hoof.

I nodded and gently rested my head on his warm chest, as I closed my eyes and let my weary mind drift away to sleep.

XXXXX

The next morning it was pouring again but this time it went with the sombre mood of the entire tower. DJ-PON3 did his commemorative internal broadcast regarding Slick. Being internal only, the ponies of the tower got to hear it. He talked about Slick’s time in the tower, how he started out as a typical policing guard and then worked his way up to becoming Chief of Staff for the guards. He said that Slick was fair and worked alongside his guards. He then finished the broadcast by saying how he’ll be dearly missed by the community as a whole, and nothing would be the same without him. I could certainly agree on that statement. When somepony had made such an impact on a community or somepony’s life, losing them tends to change them in some way or another.

Fruity said he wanted to get some air to clear his head, so he left to check on the Train Station and see when the train would next arrive. I had offered to go with him but he wanted to go alone. He was quick to say it had nothing to do with me or anything. He just wanted to straighten out his thoughts. I reluctantly let him go with a kiss to the cheek.

I sat by the balcony door with Xian in my lap, watching the rain batter the glass while I used a mane brush I found in the dresser to brush and straighten her unruly mane. Every now and then I watched the young filly wince when the brush caught a particularly hard knot that pulled on her hair. I was quick to apologise to her and brush a little gentler.

“Is F-Fruity going t-to be ok?” She asked quietly as I continued to brush.

I nodded sadly as I pulled the front of her mane that hung over an eye back, so that it flowed down behind her ear. “He will be. He’s just upset and angry over the loss of his friend,” I explained. “Be sure to give him a warm hug when he comes back. It might cheer him up a little,” I added with a smile.

The filly nodded and smiled as I finished her mane, and placed a pink butterfly hair clip to keep her mane in place behind her ear.

Thankfully, we didn’t have to wait that much longer for Fruity to return as he landed on the balcony and came in through the glass door a few minutes later. I quickly gave him a towel to help him dry off while I used one myself to help. Once he was relatively dry, Xian hugged his barrel the best she could. He was surprised for a moment, but then smiled and gently wrapped a foreleg around her to return the gesture.

“Thank you Xian,” He said softly. The filly gave a smile before she skipped over to our bed to play with Nexus’s tail fibres.

“How are you feeling?” I asked quietly as I sat beside the pegasus.

“Still down, but not ready to blow a gasket anymore,” He sighed. “I needed that fresh air…” He paused for a moment before letting out a dry chuckle. “And getting drenched.”

I nodded as I gently wrapped one of my slightly oversized wings around him. “What did you find out at the train station?”

“Hmm? Oh yeah, some good news. The train’s arriving this evening.”

“Wow really?” I asked in surprise.

He nodded. “Yep, I suppose our adventure in the Impact Crater and then to Pondale took long enough for the train to make a return trip.”

“Well, we’ll be one more step closer to the truth,” I said as we looked out into the rain. “Finally, I’ll know why I was turned into this and know why I wasn’t allowed to die.”

“Not allowed to die?” Nexus asked as he looked back to us from where he was stood by the beds, his tail draped over the bed where Xian was playing with its fibres.

I nodded and explained to him that I was a pre-war crystal pony that was sickly, and was going to die before I was tricked into signing my body over to the MoA.

“Hang on a mo,” Fruity said as he looked at me. “I know the MoA dealt with Advanced Tech as well as Espionage thanks to the Enclave soldiers that liked to talk in my bar, but why would they need to have tricked you into signing your body over to them in the first place?”

“That is a good question. Aren’t all the Ministries supported by the crown?” I inquired.

“Sadly the answer was one of the things deleted from my memory. However, I would assume it was likely done to keep the operation off the records. To leave false trails behind for anypony trying to see what the Ministries were working on,” Nexus suggested.

“Well, whatever the bloody reason, we’ll find out soon,” I said while looking out into the rain.

XXXXX

Before we left for the train, I made sure to stop by one of the garment stores to pick up a coat with a hood for Xian. That way, she could stay relatively dry on the way there. We also picked up some supplies like food and water. I had to use some bandages to cover my exposed eye to prevent a freak-out in the marketplace. Once we got our supplies, we left while there was plenty of light. The Train Station wasn’t very full this time around. It was still raining hard outside which I thought would deter most ponies from wanting to travel.

There were a couple of ponies on the platform waiting patiently for the train to arrive. They turned their heads towards us as we got closer and one of them whistled.

“Wow. Cool robot dude,” He said as he admired Nexus as he stood beside us.

“Err, thanks, he’s… one of a kind,” I replied good naturedly.

“Psst, Butter-Pat Head. It would be best to act like a Mr Hoofty while on the train and around other ponies. Might keep ponies from freaking out over your skeletal looks,” Fruity whispered.

“Certainly, Mr Fruity Sir,” Nexus said with a nod as he played along with Fruity’s suggestion. Fruity groaned at how Nexus addressed him, but I couldn’t help but chuckle (on the inside of course).

There was a loud whistle from somewhere down the tracks, indicating the train’s emanate arrival.

“Well, ready to go back to the Marejave?” I asked everypony.

Xian hugged the back of my neck with a whimper. Fruity nodded along with Nexus.

The train screeched to a halt. Then the locomotive decoupled from the train so that it could be turned around and coupled up to the other end, allowing it to pull the train again back the other way. While the Dashing Pegasus was doing this, the Conductor stepped off the train with passengers that came to Manehattan. Once the passengers had disembarked, he called for the new passengers to board. We quickly boarded the train and found a vacant cabin in a passenger car. We waited for at least another half an hour before the train set off again and began to pull us back towards the Marejave.

XXXXX

For two days, the train journey was pretty much uneventful and quiet apart from the usual clickity clack from the train wheels. I tried to help Fruity to lighten up around Nexus, but despite the machine’s friendly demeanour he still wouldn’t trust him. It was also rare that Fruity would call Nexus by his name. He would often call him by some form of insulting name themed around what he was. In the end, I stopped trying after the second day for I was getting nowhere and held little hope of Fruity’s attitude towards Nexus changing any time soon.

We all sat in the dining car enjoying lunch that was provided by the catering staff on the train. They actually used fresh grown vegetables from untainted soil in the Marejave, which I found absolutely gorgeous on the taste buds. After having to eat the preserved stuff for so long, I almost forgot what real food tasted like. The passengers in the car watched with interest as Nexus served us like a butler. He was certainly taking this role to heart, which gave the rest of the passengers the impression that he wasn’t going to hurt anypony. Behind closed doors, however, he could drop the façade and be himself. I honestly wasn’t very comfortable with him acting like our butler. I didn’t see myself above him or anything.

“Mmm. This lettuce is good,” Fruity moaned in delight as he chewed.

“So good to have real food again,” I cooed.

Even Xian herself was enjoying the fresh salad. It was likely the first time she had eaten fresh vegetables before like this. I made a mental note to look for a merchant that sold fresh produce in New Pegasus once we got there.

As we were finishing off our plates, we felt a shift in the train carriage. It was only slight but all of us felt ourselves lean slightly towards the opposite end.

“You all felt that, right?” I asked before I looked in the direction of the front of the train.

“Yeah. We’re speeding up,” Fruity confirmed.

Suddenly, two train guards entered the dining car from the front-end gangway door. They both looked pretty serious.

“Sorry to disturb you all during your lunch, but we have just entered Raider territory,” The first guard announced.

“As a safety precaution, we would like you all to return to your cabins or designated passenger seating while we mount a defence,” The second instructed.

“Well sh…” Fruity began to curse before I stopped him.

“Not in front of Xian.”

“Well cock then,” He said with a roll of his eyes.

We quickly got up from our cushions and made way back to our cabin, pushing past a couple of ponies to reach our car. Once inside, I retrieved my stetson hat, put it on my head and turned to Xian.

“I know you don’t like being left alone honey, but don’t worry. We’ll be just outside the door, ok?” I told her, gently stroking her combed mane. “Hide under the cabin seat. I promise you’ll be safe.”

“Y-yes mummy,” The young filly whimpered fearfully as she hid under one of the seats and curled up.

“Alright. If Raiders try anything, let’s make them see they picked the wrong fight,” Fruity said as he strapped himself into his battlesaddle.

I nodded in agreement as we exited the cabin and closed the door behind us. “I’ll stay in front of the door. I won’t let anypony get passed me,” I told Fruity and Nexus.

“I guess we got the corridor, Metal Head,” Fruity said to Nexus, who nodded. The two turned around and went their separate ways to cover equal amounts of the corridor in the passenger car. Having a look down either way revealed a train guard, guarding the gangway door into the next car. I didn’t know how the raiders were going to get aboard the train, but the large windows covering the corridor felt like a point of entry.

*ring ring… ring ring…*

A phone rang from the wall at the end of the passenger car next to one of the guards. The guard wearing black combat armour picked up the phone from the wall and held it to his ear. I swivelled my ear to face his direction to listen in using my heightened electronic hearing.

“Raiders, jumping from the bridge?” The guard asked in surprise. “I swear they get more daring every trip. Alright, thank you Marshal.”

“Get ready guys!” I called to my companions.

Suddenly, a shadow passed over us as the train rocketed under a bridge. A second later, a series of thuds and bangs rattled about from the roof above us.

“Crazy bastards!” Fruity said as he pulled his firing bit to his mouth and primed his plasma battlesaddle.

Nexus pulled his automatic Riot Shotgun from his back with his nano-fibre tail, spreading his legs as he got into a battle stance. I followed suit by pulling Lucky 13 out of its holster and held it in my maw. Like Nexus, I also used my tail to hold my lever-action shotgun at the ready.

We looked up at the ceiling when we heard multiple clunks from hoof steps. They seemed to be moving around aimlessly, going around in circles until finally moving towards the rear of the of car.

“What the hell are they doing?” Fruity asked as he turned to follow the hoof steps while also aiming his battlesaddle up to the ceiling.

There was then another loud metallic thud from near the rear of the car before the raiders ran back down to the opposite side. The guard aimed his own battle rifle up to the ceiling above him as the raider group stopped above him. Before we could question what the raiders were up to, a large explosion consumed the rear of the passenger car, flooding the car with smoke.

“SHIT!” Fruity yelled before he began to hack and cough.

I didn’t fare any better. The smoke burned the back of my throat and my unprotected eye. It became impossible for me to see with the smoke, but I retained my hearing.

“You were only supposed to blow the bloody roof off!” I heard a gravelly voice yell.

That scolding was followed by the sound of breaking metal and tearing of rubber and fabric.

“There goes the rest of the train,” Another raider grumbled. “Another raider group will take our shit.”

“Won’t matter if we take the rest of the train,” The first voice said.

The smoke wasn’t clearing. There was no air flow to blow the smoke away. I could hear the guard at the front of the train car coughing up a storm, but I couldn’t hear the other one. The explosion was directly above him where he was positioned. Probably got blown up. There was then a gunshot from the front of the carriage, followed by the shattering of glass and soon the corridor was filled by a roaring wind. Within seconds, the smoke was blown out the back through the hole made by the explosion. Able to see and breath again, I noticed the first large window near the front was shattered. The guard must have shot it out to create an opening for air from outside to flow in and clear the smoke. Now with the smoke gone, we were all able to see the damage caused by the blast. The last three cars were no longer attached to the train, and the entire back wall with the gangway door had been destroyed along with about ten feet of the roof. This created a massive opening in the back of the carriage.

“Well shit. This is worse than anticipated,” Fruity said gravely before he turned to me. “Crystal. It might be best if you take Xian into another carriage.”

“Are you sure? What about you?” I asked with worry for him.

“Heh, don’t worry about me. There is nowt these guys could do to me and besides, yours and Xian’s safety is more important,” He then nodded to Nexus who hadn’t moved since the detonation. “I got him to watch my back.”

I quickly gave Fruity a kiss on the cheek and then stared into his purple eyes. “Come back to me,” I told him. He nodded with a wing salute and then walked up the corridor to join Nexus in defending the rear of the train.

I opened the door and quickly made my way to where Xian had hidden under the bench. The poor filly had curled up tightly into a trembling ball and was whimpering.

“Xian honey. We need to go. It’s not safe here anymore,” I urged.

The young filly lifted her head at my voice and the look of utter terror broke my heart. Her eyes were wide with terror and red from the tears which had streaked down her cheeks. The poor dear was also shaking, and it wasn’t from the rocking of the train’s motion.

“Hey, it’s ok. Mummy’s here now,” I said soothingly as I gently reached under the seat to pull her out and cradle her. When I held the young filly to my barrel she clung to me tightly, like if she let go she’d lose me. “Hey, hey, it’s ok. You’re safe now,” I cooed softly to her while I gently stroked her mane.

My ear twitched when there were multiple thuds from down the corridor towards the rear of the car.

“Crystal, hurry up!” Fruity shouted before he discharged a shot from his plasma weapons.

His shot was followed by pops and bangs that my electronic brain didn’t recognise, but I began to hear more gunshots further along the train. Raiders must’ve been all over this thing by the sound of it.

“I count five,” I heard Nexus state calmly while he fired off his shotgun.

“Ok Xian, we’re leaving,” I said as I gently moved her onto my back. The young filly hugged my neck tightly and I raised my wings to act as shields to hide her from view. Then I quickly threw open the door and began for the gangway door to the next car. As I left the cabin, I chanced a look to the rear and saw five raiders in heavy looking makeshift armour, branding weapons made from wood and pipe. Unsurprisingly, Fruity was using Nexus as cover since he was more than bulletproof against the weapons the raiders were using.

“Fruity! Nexus! I got Xian and making a break for the next car!” I announced to them and quickly ran for the gangway door. The guard didn’t react to me while he used the cabin wall as cover and fired his .308 battle rifle down the corridor at the raiders.

I barrelled through the gangway door into the next car and skidded to a halt when I entered the open passenger car. After rushing through the passage car, I found myself almost crashing into a group of three raiders that were laughing over killing an innocent stallion, until one of them noticed me.

“Hmm, now that’s a fine plot,” He drawled.

“Hmm yea. Exotic zebra ass,” Another said as he turned and regarded me.

I blushed with embarrassment at their comments but was also disgusted by these raiders as they ogled me and undressed me with their eyes. The largest raider of the group smirked darkly at me as he looked me over.

“Hmm, she’d make a fine sex toy for us, won’t she colts?” He asked with a husky growl. His question was answered by a series of nods and wolf whistles. “And what’s this? She has a little filly too. Hmm wonderful. She’ll grow up to be a good whore for us,” He grinned.

My eyes widened in alarm at the raiders intentions for myself, but more so for little Xian. I could not let them have her. I used my tail to pick the terrified filly off my back and place her down behind a passenger bench as I bent down close to her.

Stay here and don’t come out until I say so ok honey? Mummy needs to teach these bad ponies a lesson,” I told her in zebrican.

Once I made sure she was ok behind the bench, I stood back up and approached the three raiders, my eyes narrowing.

“You so much as take a step towards her, and I’ll kill you where you stand,” I threated.

“Hah! Some fire in this one. What’re you gonna do little filly?” The large raider, an earth pony, asked before he back hoofed me across the face. His strike was surprisingly swift and hard. It stung but didn’t hurt too much, probably due to having a skeleton made of metal. Unfortunately, the slap ripped off the bandages (and my hat) that concealed my exposed eye, which still hadn’t healed yet. I don’t know why my regen talisman had stopped healing my eye, but it needed to finish and soon.

The raider fell onto his rump after striking me, and held his foreleg as he cried out in pain. “Argh fuck! That felt I punched a brick wall,” He complained.

“Um Torque Bow…” One of his compatriots said before he trailed off while pointing a hoof a me.

“What is it? What’s wrong…” Torque trailed off too as he looked at me, unfazed by his attack. From the blue glow reflecting out of their eyes, I could tell they could all see my cybernetic eye.

“She’s no zebra! What the fuck is she?” Torque exclaimed.

I looked to all three of the raiders while making sure my cybernetic eye was focused on all of them. “Your worst nightmare,” I replied as I began to advance on them, flaring my wings threateningly.

The three raiders backed up a few paces with unsure expressions on their faces. They held those expressions until the larger one, Torque Bow, grinned suddenly.

“Listen guys. She’s a robot, right? Then that means the Rust Demons will pay a handsome price for her.”

“Hey yea! Those freaks love anything robotic,” One of the other raiders said as the other two adopted their own sinister smiles. Then all three of them stood firm. I supposed with what they had just remembered, it rid them of any fear they felt towards me.

I stopped and planted my hooves firmly on the floor, looking to each of the raiders and waiting for them to make a move. Torque looked to each of his subordinates and gave them a nod. Then, they moved between the benches beside him and began to climb over them to get around me. It seemed that they were trying to get around me, either to flank me or to get to Xian. Either way, with how they had to climb over the benches it left them wide open, and my tail still held my shotgun. They weren’t very bright to think that climbing over the backs of the benches was a good idea. I seized the opportunity to use my direct connection to my PipBuck and slipped into SATS. I felt the world around me slow down until everything moved at a snail’s pace as the spell temporarily slowed down time. I used the targeting system to toggle a shot to the first raider’s head as it was unprotected and had an eighty percent chance of being hit. Then I turned to the second raider. He was just about to climb over a bench too, and clearly presented his head for an open shot as well. So, I toggled another shot for his head too which was at a ninety percent chance. Hmm, good odds. When I finished lining up my shots, I ended the spell and let time resume its normal pace, the second part of the spell taking effect. I felt how I didn’t have control of my tail as I aimed at the first raider and fired. The raider screamed in agony, for despite the high percentage, the buckshot tore into his neck and shoulder instead. It was safe to say he would bleed out with those buckshot wounds. The spell quickly pulled my aim to the second raider, who was frozen after witnessing his friend taking a mortal wound, and fired. The buckshot ripped through his face and neck, popping his eyes out and punching a hole into his neck. That was two raiders down and just one to go.

“Not bad, for a machine,” Torque said before he quickly whipped out a pistol from a hidden holster inside his foreleg armour plating, and fired a single round. I was surprised by his speed, and I barely had time to duck my head thanks to my warning system. Still, I let out a cry of pain as the bullet tore through my nano-fibre tail. As an instinctual reaction, my tail flicked harshly and fanned out, causing me to drop my shotgun. I groaned from the minor damage report I got and the pain I felt.


I growled distastefully at the raider as I examined the weapon he held in his mouth. It didn’t look like the hoofmade pipe guns like the other raiders had. No, this one was the real deal. I felt my electronic brain buzz at the back of my head as it went through its stored data, cross referencing what I saw with what was in the database. My electronic brain identified the gun as an NCC 10mm Pistol, but from the look of it, it had also been modified to increase its power and ammunition capacity.

“You will certainly fetch a good price,” Torque said before he fired a couple more shots. My threat warning alerted me just in time, and I was able to dodge to the left and to the right to avoid the two bullets. “Hmph. Stupid robot, must have some fancy gizmo to sense gunshots. No matter,” He complained as he then sheathed his gun again and pulled a large machete off his back. With the machete in his mouth, he charged at me and swung his head, aiming to swing the blade to cut into my neck. I quickly lifted my left foreleg, the PipBuck’s durable back plating blocking the blade cold. His eyes widened in surprise as I blocked his attack, but now that he was so close I could counter attack. I placed a hind hoof forward to better balance myself, and picked my right forehoof off the floor and then thrust it forward hard into this makeshift armoured chest. Torque let out a pained cry as my mechanical strength enhanced the punch to put a deep dent into chest armour. This likely broke a couple of ribs and caused him some great pain as he toppled backwards.

“I will not let you or any other raider take advantage of Xian or me,” I declared as I picked my shotgun back up.

“Argh! You-you fucking bitch,” Torque groaned in pain while he struggled to stand. “We’ll kill you and that brat,” He threatened.

“I don’t think so,” I said darkly as I levelled the shotgun with his head.

“Mummy!” Xian whimpered from behind me. I looked back to see the filly peeking out from behind the bench. She looked terrified, but now her eyes were wide as she saw how I had a gun levelled with this fallen raider’s head. I couldn’t bring myself to kill him, to execute him in cold blood in front of Xian, despite his threats. But I wasn’t going to let him live so that he could threaten her again either. Instead, I shot out one of the large windows, the buckshot shattering it completely.

I sheathed my shotgun once the window, grabbed the injured raider by his armour and pulled him towards the opening. “I’m sorry sir, but with no ticket I’m afraid I’m going to have to remove you from the train,” I said in a sing song voice, trying to do an impression of an old prewar attendant as I used my mechanical strength to heave him up off the floor.

“Wait, wait, no, no, no, no, no!” He cried as I threw him out the window. I heard him scream as he sailed out and disappear for good. I sighed with relief and flopped down onto the bench nearest to me, groaning under my weight. I don’t know if I still had adrenaline left, but once Torque had been dealt with I felt like I just came down from an adrenaline rush. While I rested on the bench, Xian rushed over to me and hugged against my side. I smiled and gently wrapped my wing around her. With Torque gone and the two raiders that were with him dead, this car became raider-free and safe.

We could relax for a moment now without any raiders to worry about. While I sat on the bench and held Xian in a comforting hug, I couldn’t help but feel like I scared her somehow.

“Xian, I’m sorry if I scared you honey,” I said softly while I gently stroked her side with my wing.

“I was scared, but you stopped the bad ponies,” She whispered softly as she leaned against my side.

I smiled down at her before jumping up out of fright when the gangway door at the front of the car burst open. I quickly grabbed my shotgun and raised it at the door, but it turned out to be a train guard, so I sighed with relief and lowered the weapon.

The guard saw me and acknowledged my presence before he checked the rest of the car. “Good, it’s clear,” He whispered to himself before he rushed back to the door. “It’s clear. Send them through,” He called. What followed next was a harrowing sight. Other passengers began to enter the car in various states of injury. Some looked minor while others looked serious, and all of them looked miserable. I got up from my seat and told Xian to stay close while I walked up to the guard by the door.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” I offered.

“Yes actually, you can…” He trailed off when he looked at me, specifically my cybernetic eye.

“Yes, I know. I’m part machine,” I told him in a nonsense tone.

“Right. Well, um… You can help settle these survivors. Give them any aid you can and what not,” He told me before there was a bang from further up in the train.

“Hold them off!” Another guard yelled from inside the next car.

“Fuck!” The guard readied his plasma pistol while his comrades began to hold off the raiders in the other car. “Fuck these ambitious cunts!”

“Crystal!” Fruity yelled as he limped up to me. I quickly turned around and neck-hugged him. “Thank Faust you’re ok!”

“Oh Fruity, you’re hurt,” I squeaked in worry.

“Huh? Oh, it’s nothing. Just a flesh wound to the leg,” He waved it off, but it clearly hurt with how he winced when he put pressure on his left hind leg. “These raiders are all piss and wind.”

“You say that Mr Fruity, but their armour and overzealous behaviour suggests they have confidence and some skills,” Nexus pointed out as he too re-joined us.

“You gotta stop calling me ‘Mr Fruity’. You make me sound like some old git,” Fruity complained.

Our reunion was interrupted by a round of automatic gunfire and a yell from a raider, before we heard a guard in the next train car cheer.

“That’s it! Come on fellas! Let’s push these bastards back!”

Fruity gritted his teeth in pain. “C’mon you demented tonka toy. We gotta help them,” Fruity urged. “Crystal, you stay here and keep Xian and these passengers safe, ok?”

“Yes, Mr Fruity” Nexus agreed and followed him through the gangway door. Fruity groaned at being called “Mr Fruity” once again.

I nodded and began to do what I could to help the passengers. They were a little hesitant to accept my help at first when they saw my eye. However, they warmed up to me quickly after they saw how I showed care and compassion for Xian.

The fight for the train lasted a good few hours. Raiders used the tight confines of the train cars to their advantage, as well as took hostages when they could. In the end, armed passengers and guards managed to either drive the raiders off the train or just kill them. Luckily, they didn’t get to the locomotive, for if they did we would have been stranded in raider territory. Sadly, when the Marshal took a head count for all train staff, guard detail and passengers, we found out that we suffered a lot of casualties. We had lost half of the passengers and just over a third of the train staff and guards. A good number of the passengers were in the three cars that the raiders managed to separate from the train. The train itself suffered a lot of damage, from broken windows and wall panels to broken crockery and damaged passenger possessions. This trip would cost the Trans Equestrian Railway Company a shed-load of caps to fix up the train for service again.

XXXXX

Two more days passed since the raider attack. The train staff did what they could to clean and fix up the train. The train had also maintained its top speed running, but kept it below dangerous levels for the engine (unlike the last one). The train still looked beat up inside but at least it wasn’t covered in broken glass and blood now.

We eventually emerged from a long tunnel that cut through the western mountain range of Equestria that led into the Marejave region. From the tunnel, it would still take a day’s travel to reach New Pegasus due to us having to follow a set train line. Sadly, that would have took us the long way. By the time we finally made it onto the mainline that would take us to the train station in Hayside, it was night time.

“I nearly forgot how beautiful the sky was at night here,” I said with a nostalgic smile on my face. I looked up to the clear night sky, with a crescent moon glowing brightly amongst the stars through the window.

“Yeah. Forgot the SPP towers don’t reach this far west,” Fruity agreed as he sat and cuddled against me with Xian quietly snoring between us.

“It’ll be good to feel the sun’s heat again,” I smiled.

“Ugh, no thanks. I’d prefer the rain of Manehattan over the sun,” Fruity whined.

I giggled and then kissed his cheeks softly.

Nexus, who had stood silently nearby suddenly went ram rod stiff and his eyes widened in a gesture that I suspect would be surprise or worry for the machine.

“Are you ok?” I asked the machine as his eyes began to flick about the room like he was trying to understand something.

“Somepony is trying to contact me, but that should be impossible without my Signal Transmitter being online!” He exclaimed in worry. I guess I could see why he would be worried if somepony was able to still connect with him. Could that mean he could be connected with Unit-1000 still?

“Override accepted!” An electronic female voice said from inside Nexus.

“What was that?” Fruity asked.

That voice would be the generic computer notification alert system preinstalled in all Infiltrator Mark 2 Units,” A female voice said from Nexus that for some reason sounded very familiar to me. Nexus rooted his hooves to the floor of the train car and his mouth fell agape, while his eyes showed signs of panic with how wide and unfocused they were.

“Who are you and how did you get into Nexus?” I demanded angrily.

Nexus? Nice name. It suits you I-02 IS. It is good to see that you do not serve him anymore. Anyway, it was easy for his creator to find an alternate means of contacting him without his signal transmitter. I had to reach out to you, Crystal Éclair, because I must warn you that you are heading into a trap. Colonel Ironside has been preparing for your return and has one of his machines stationed at the train station to capture you upon arrival.”

“Well cock,” Fruity sighed.

Instead of giving that old fool what he wants, please come to Mount Coltston and to the Alicorn Sanctuary at the summit. I can give you all the answers you seek,” With that the voice ended.

“The answers I seek…? Who the flying fuck was that?” I demanded. I may not know who the voice belonged to, but I could have sworn I heard it before. It sounded so familiar.

“There is only one pony that I would consider my creator, but she would be long dead by now,” Nexus said. He sounded unsure.

“I think we should heed the warning though. That Ironside guy would likely have another of those robots or more waiting for us,” Fruity suggested.

“I also think we should go to this Alicorn Sanctuary and see this pony,” I said.

“Why?” Fruity asked.

“She knew my name, my actual name. She also knew I was looking for answers. If anything, it’s a lead,” I explained.

“And I would like to know how she hijacked my system to communicate with us,” Nexus added.

“Alright then. Let’s go,” Fruity said as he got up slowly as to not wake up the sleeping filly.

I nodded, gently picked up Xian and placed her on my back so she could continue sleeping soundly. Then we went about gathering our gear. Once we had collected everything, we made our way to the back of the train where the back wall was still destroyed. Fruity and I were easily able to jump into the air and hover behind the speeding train, but Nexus had to jump.

“What are you waiting for, smeg-for-brains?” Fruity urged.

“A patch of sandy terrain sir,” Nexus replied before he jumped when the train passed onto more desert environment. He bounced and kicked up a lot of sand, but thankfully he was unharmed when he came to rest in the soft sediment.

“You ok?” I asked as I landed slowly.

“Yes, thank you. Now let us find what you seek,” He said as he pulled himself out of the sand and we all turned northwest in the direction of the mountains just west of the city of New Pegasus.

Chapter 17: The Answers We Seek

View Online

Fallout Equestria: Influx

Chapter 17: The Answers We Seek.


The monitor displayed a recording of the late Princess Celestia, goddess of the sun, as she attended the Summer Sun Celebration during a year when the war against the zebras either wasn’t raging or was in its infancy. Everything in the recording seemed so calm and peaceful. She walked down the red carpet with a serene smile on her alabaster muzzle, and gave respectful nods to important ponies she locked eyes with. Her smile brightened especially when she noticed six particular mares near the dias, and then walked by them as she approached said dias. Once on the dias, the large white alicorn met up with her smaller dark blue sister, Princess Luna, goddess of the Moon and Guardian of the Night, and gave her a loving embrace before she turned to face the crowd.

The princess began a speech telling the assembled crowd, as well as camera ponies that were broadcasting the Summer Sun Celebration across Equestria, how proud she was of each and everypony. She would list off what she was proud of and why. This speech went on for a good few minutes before it became a little personal as she then addressed the Elements of Harmony and her sister, and again listed why she was proud of them, only with a little bit more depth this time. Once the speeches were over and Princess Luna nudged the moon all the way below the horizon, Princess Celestia then rose up high into the air before striking a dramatic pose with her horn ablaze in golden solar magic, before the sun rose up from the far horizon to bring forward the day.

The recording stopped when it reached its end, and a metallic hoof reached up onto the console and tapped a key on the keyboard. The screen flashed black for a moment before a new image appeared, this one showing a recording of a news reel. The headline read, “Return to Solo Rulership! Princess Celestia Abdicates the Crown!”. The same metallic hoof pressed another key to start the recording, but an error message flashed across the screen. “Error! Audio Corrupted!”. However, it didn’t matter that there was no sound. What was happening in the recording was enough to explain what was going on. Princess Celestia stood before Princess Luna, and removed Luna’s smaller obsidian crown before she then removed her larger golden crown, and then placed it on her sister’s head, her mouth moved to indicate that she was reciting something. Once she was finished, she bowed low to the now sole Princess of Equestria. Luna, however, looked shocked at the outcome before the video suddenly cut off.

“Incoming Transmission!” Alerted the male electronic voice of Unit-1000’s notification system.

Unit-1000 stood up and stepped away from the data terminal it was reviewing before it accessed its comm link with Colonel Ironside.

“Yes, Colonel Sir,” The machine addressed.

“I-01 and I-02 IS have entered the Marejave area, but recent scans from the facility have detected that their power signatures are off to the west of the rail line,” Ironside said over the link. “They are not following the predicted path. I need you to confirm in case the facility equipment is not working correctly, and if so, I will then need you to redirect Unit-3 as necessary.”

“Affirmative,” Unit-1000 said as it turned to leave the room it was in.

“Also, what are you doing in the old living quarters?” Colonel Ironside asked in confusion.

“I was just reviewing a data terminal sir,” The alicorn robot replied simply.

“I did not detect a terminal data access on the network or on that floor,” Ironside said with suspicion in his voice.

Unit-1000 heard the suspicion and realised it needed to say something to appease its master before he lost trust in the machine. He already had lost his vessel, and Units 1 and 2 had also failed him after getting so close. It was then that it remembered the events that led to where Ironside was currently: trapped in the computer system and locked out of most of the facility’s other functions. So, it decided to use that to its advantage.

“It would seem this terminal has been disconnected from the network, sir,” The robot replied. “After a quick examination it would appear its network cables have been cut.”

“Blasted, traitorous wench,” Ironside cursed. “Alright, get a move on.”

“Yes sir,” The machine said, grateful he bought its lie since it had pulled the plug itself because it didn’t want Ironside to know it was learning about the pony it was designed to replace.

Unit-1000 made its way up through the main floor via the Mark 2 Vault, then to the facility’s sealed entrance. It lowered its head to the console beside the door, and extended a data cable from the back of its head and connected it to the console. The machine accessed the external camera system and checked the area outside the door to be sure it was clear. Once satisfied, the machine disconnected from the console and exited the facility. Then, it walked just far enough so that its skeletal head could see over the hill on either side of the recess that led to the door.

“Performing scan,” Unit-1000 said over its link to Ironside. The gem on the tip of its antenna-like horn glowed for a moment before it faded. “Confirmed. I-01 and Unit-1002 have deviated from the predicted path. According to recorded scan data, it would seem they deviated shortly after entering the Marejave and began to move in a north-westerly direction. Current scans indicate they are currently at the MASA HQ.”

“This is most curious. Everything previously had pointed on I-01 being led to us. What changed?” Ironside said to himself while still on the link.

“I will contact Unit-3 and give it new orders,” Unit-1000 said as it turned around and began for the facility. It paused for a moment when it noticed a bunch of blackened skeletons clustered around the door. There were about five skeletons, two normal-sized adult skeletons and three smaller ones that varied in size. There were also two makeshift signs lying in the dirt beside the skeletons. One read “Help Us” and the other one read “We are dying out here”. Unit-1000 understood that this was a scene of a family, likely from when the bombs fell, desperately trying to get inside the facility and being denied salvation. The machine coldly walked on by the bodies, not sparing them a second glance as it re-entered the facility. Once inside and the door was resealed, the machine once again entered its network. It still detected the unresponsive Unit-2 before it reached out and connected with Unit-3.

“Oh, um, Unit-1000 ma’am, um, what do I owe the pleasure,” Pixie Lulamoon answered when she felt the connection in her electronic brain.

“There has been a change of plans, Unit-3. I-01 is now moving northwest. You are to head west on an intercept course. Capture of this unit is still of the upmost importance,” Unit-1000 explained to its disguised infiltrator.

“Um, y-yes ma’am. I’ll head out now,” She replied before the connection was terminated by Unit-1000.

XXXXX

It took us all night and day after we jumped from the train to find some place in this desert wasteland for shelter. Imagine our surprise as we crested a hill after crossing an old dual carriageway, and found ourselves in front of the old MASA HQ building again. It was a stroke of luck to have stumbled back upon the place, and a blessing since it had started to get dark and we were all tired (well, most of us) after an all-night journey.

“The Marejave Astronomical Space Agency HQ. It’s been a while,” Fruity commented as we approached the main doors.

“Sure has,” I replied with a feeling of nostalgia as the memories of our first time here surfaced.

“Where are all the robots?” Fruity asked as he looked around.

“Perhaps somepony destroyed them all. We have been gone a while,” I answered as I pushed open a door and held it open for everypony to walk in.

“Yeah, destroyed…” Fruity mumbled as I caught him staring at Nexus with suspicion.

Once everypony was inside, I quickly checked outside to make sure nopony was around. Then, I closed the door and barred it by grabbing a metal pipe that lay discarded on the floor, and jammed it between the door handles.

“This place seems a little barer than I remember,” Fruity said to himself as he looked around the large lobby.

He was right. Despite the mess on the floor, a lot of the metal scrap was gone. The broken terminals, at least half of the model rocket in the centre of the lobby, and most importantly, the four bodies we saw laying before the blue security door were all gone. All that was left of those bodies was a bloodstain from where they lay.

“Who would take dead bodies?” I gasped while I gently put Xian down on the floor.

“Some smegging sick tossers, that’s who,” Fruity replied with a shake of his head.

“Or Ghouls,” Nexus added.

We did a quick circuit of the lobby to be sure there were no robots hiding away like last time. Thankfully, the hidden doors were still open and empty, which meant the sentries must have been destroyed as well. The security gate that closed behind us when we entered the museum last time was still in the same position as last time too, all bent and pulled up in the corner.

“Do you remember doing that?” I asked Nexus, hoping that perhaps there was still some of his older memories intact.

The skeletal robot inside the scorched combat armour stared at the bent gate for a moment, before he shook his head and let out an electronic noise that I believed to be a sigh. “No. I couldn’t find anything in my memory to identify that with.”

“If we can, we’ll try to get your memory back,” I offered with a sad smile as I gently put my hoof on his armoured shoulder.

“Thank you, Crystal. That means a lot considering what I tried to do to you in the past,” Nexus said gratefully.

I just smiled warmly while I rubbed his shoulder reassuringly.

As the evening rolled around, Fruity and Nexus ventured back into the museum portion of the ground floor. If I remembered rightly, there was a gift shop in the first room on the left. We didn’t get a chance to check it out because we got attacked by a sentry drone almost immediately after we entered the museum.

While they were away, I set up camp inside the large lobby. I was able to find some cardboard boxes stacked up inside the mare’s bathroom in the top right of the lobby, which I broke down and flattened to use as makeshift beds. It was primitive, but we had to make do with what was available to us. There was plenty of scrap pieces of wood lying around, which I used to make a small fire that I setup between the cardboard mats. I think a sentry may have barrelled its way through here at one stage, because the corners of the concrete base of the rocket model were all broken and crumbled up, giving me plenty of pieces to build a circle around the small fire. To get the fire started, I took one of my shotgun shells and broke it open, pouring the gunpowder out and onto the pieces of wood to act as an accelerant, before I picked up two rough pieces of metal and clanged them together hard and fast to create a spark. I had to repeat the process a couple of times until I produced a large enough spark to ignite the wood.

I found it disturbing to a degree that I knew how to do all this because I certainly never went camping as a foal, and definitely never had survival training while I was growing up. Just how much does my electronic brain have stored that it just injects into my brain without me knowing?

I was brought out of my musing by the sound of small, excited hoof clopping. When I looked over to the cardboard mat that I setup closet to me, I saw Xian sat on her haunches with a happy smile while she clopped her hooves as she watched the flames of the new campfire dance. I quickly forgot about the foreboding feeling that had begun to settle and smiled as I watched the filly. She had watched me work since Fruity and Nexus left for the gift shop. It made me feel good to see her smile and look so excited at the end result.

Ignis, ita satis,” The small filly said softly in zebrican.

I smiled. “I know, darling,” I moved over to her mat and sat down behind her, then draped a foreleg around her and gently hugged her to my barrel. “It may be pretty to look at, but it can be dangerous, so don’t get too close or touch it, ok sweetie,” I told her gently and finished with a nuzzle to the top of her head.

The young zebra filly let out a soft coo at the nuzzle and returned the nuzzle with her own to the underside of my chin. “Ego scio mumia,” It was a good thing I had some sort of zebra translator built into my system when she spoke in zebrican. I smiled warmly and felt happy as the filly continued to call me her mother. At least I knew what I can focus on when I complete my quest now.

About half an hour after I finished setting up the camp, Fruity and Nexus returned.

“Welcome back. Did you find anything good?” I asked while I still gently held Xian, who happily laid against my barrel.

“It was a load of smeg. Just a load useless junk and pretty much nothing worth taking that won’t weigh us down,” Fruity sighed as he sat down on the mat beside us.

“Sir is correct. After taking an inventory of what was in the gift shop, it was more beneficial if we just ignored it,” Nexus said while he stood off to the side of the camp. He looked pretty creepy with how his red eyes glowed brightly in the low light.

“Well, we did find this in the lost and found,” Fruity said as he reached into his duster pocket and pulled out a plushie of an orange earth pony with a blonde mane and tail. He smiled as he gave it to Xian. “Here you go, kiddo,” Xian gave a happy squeal at being given a new toy by Fruity, and hugged the plushie, which was about a quarter of her size to her chest. Fruity then turned to Nexus with a frown. “Ok, bird-tray head. Enough of the Sir and Mister bollocks.”

“What, and spoil the good working relationship we have?” Nexus shot back.

I giggled when Fruity groaned as he knew Nexus wasn’t going to stop anytime soon. I turned to Fruity with a questioning look. “What’s with this new word you are using?” I asked.

“What word, smeg?” He asked to which I nodded. “What, you don’t want me swearing around the kid so I gotta make a compromise.”

I smiled happily at that and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

Once we had all eaten, minus Nexus, we all settled down on our own mats ready to sleep. Nexus remained standing, but his eyes dimmed to the point of nearly turning off to show he was in standby mode, which basically meant he was asleep but could awaken at any moment. Xian, however, slept snuggled up against my barrel while she clutched her plushie. I smiled softly as I draped a wing over the small filly to keep her warm. Fruity had rolled onto his side, facing me, but he wasn’t asleep yet. He smiled at me softly as he watched me tend to Xian.

“I think you’ve been the best thing to happen to that filly in a long time,” He said quietly with a yawn at the end.

“I don’t know about that, but I do hope I’ve made a difference in her life,” I replied.

“If it wasn’t for you, she would likely be dead by now,” He said sombrely.

I shivered at Fruity’s last statement as memories of Bonbon Springs resurfaced. I had to admit that with how riled up the ponies in that camp were, if they had found her before we did, they would have probably killed her in anger.

I opened my mouth to say something, when suddenly, there was a loud pop followed by a sizzling sound from upstairs and a thud.

“The hell was that?” Fruity asked in alarm as he rolled over and was on his hooves in seconds.

“Alert. Large magic output detected,” Nexus mechanically said as he woke up.

“That doesn’t sound good,” I said as I stood up and protectively over Xian.

Suddenly, there was a bright blue flash of light, followed by the same loud pop and sizzle from upstairs in the lobby near our camp. The flash was so bright it blinded us, even my synthetic vision was hampered by the glare. When the light faded and we could see again, we all turned to the source and I stared in awe at a tall blue alicorn in a stetson hat, and what looked like a modified mercenary outfit. The clothes consisted of black pants, and a black vest over a red undershirt. I couldn’t see a weapon, but that long horn felt like it was more of a weapon than any gun could be.

“Oh fuck, an alicorn! Crystal get back!” Fruity quickly threw his battlesaddle on and jumped in front of me and primed his weapons to fire.

The alicorn’s eyes widened in shock at the hostility towards her by the purple pegasus and the weapons aimed at her. She quickly sat down on her haunches and waved her forelegs to show she was not aggressive.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, I’m not here to hurt you! I’m here to help on behalf of your creator!” She squeaked.

“Wait what?!” Fruity said in surprise before his multiplas weapon discharged since he was in the process of firing. “Ah shit,” He cursed when the three small plasma bolts shot towards the panicking alicorn.

“Eek!” She cried out in alarm and closed her eyes tightly. Her long, spiralled horn glowed a bright blue and a bubble formed around her. Xian and I watched in fascination as the bubble encapsulated the alicorn. Its surface looked to ripple like water, and when the three bolts of plasma collided with it, the points of impacts dented and formed circular cracks as if the shield was made of glass despite the watery look to it. Despite the cracks, the shield didn’t budge or shift, which made me think that the cracks were simply just a visual effect.

“NO!” The alicorn cried out and her glowing horn flashed with more power. The shield’s surface took on a rainbow-coloured aura, and the three plasma bolts glowed brighter as if they were being empowered. We were all confused by the change, but with a flash from the shield and a flash from my threat warning in the corner of my vision, I quickly scooped up Xian and jumped to the side. When the shield flashed, the three plasma bolts shot back towards us at high speed and with greater power than the weapon that fired them produced. One bolt hit the floor just an inch from my bed, one shot up and hit the ceiling, and the last one hit the blue security door but with the added power so that it burned right through the door and left a small hole in it.

“What in the bloody hell was that?” Fruity demanded as he fluttered back down to the floor after having took to the air to evade the deflected plasma bolts.

The alicorn opened her eyes and winced when she saw the smoking holes in the floor, ceiling and door. “I… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to use my deflector shield.”

“Hang on, wait a minute. Just what the smeg is going on here?” Fruity asked in confusion.

“What’s the matter, Fruity?” I asked while I sat with Xian hugged to my chest in my forelegs.

“Have I not told you about these alicorns?” Fruity asked to which I shook my head. I did find it odd that a pony of the race that was once of the Princesses just appeared out of nowhere. “Ok well. These alicorns are not legit alicorns. They were created through some mad magic science bollocks. They seem to be controlled by a hivemind of sorts and one in charge calls itself the Goddess. Normally these alicorns don’t talk like that. They don’t talk much but when they do, they usually talk like they are all superior and snobby. The colours of the alicorns also determine what their abilities are since blue alicorns are known for invisibility. How the hell does this one know how to do a green alicorn’s ability, let alone a reflective one and a purple one’s teleport ability?”

We all looked to the clothed alicorn that gulped with some nervousness with all our eyes on her. Her wide yellow, slit-pupiled eyes looked to each of us as she realised we wanted an explanation.

“I will be happy to explain everything to you while we journey to the Sanctuary,” She answered. “Like I told you, I’m here to help.”

“Help? How can we trust one of the Goddess’s minions?” Fruity demanded. “Somepony who would rather kill us, or if we were a good spell casting unicorn, foalnap us at some point?”

The alicorn visibly cringed at his harsh words.

“Ok, I understand how it would be difficult for you to trust me since my kind in the mainland is nothing but pawns for that pompous, arrogant blowhard of a dominant consciousness, but we had no choice since she controlled our minds and bodies,” she grumbled. It was clear she didn’t like what this Goddess did with alicorns in the mainland. “You can trust me and all of the other alicorns that reside here in the Marejave. Me and them are free of the Goddess’s control. Though I will admit some of them may have some mental issues they are still trying to work out as a result of being free of her.”

The mare then took a breath to calm herself down and gave a calming smile.

“My name is Dusty Star. I’ve lived here in the Marejave for at least twenty years now. I, like all the other alicorns, was sent here to investigate the west, but shortly after entering the region, I lost my connection with the Goddess. We don’t know how or what disrupts the connection, but the Doctor theorises that there might be a potent element in the mountain range that surrounds the western region of Equestria.”

“Dusty Star?” Nexus said, testing the name as he stepped closer, out of the shadow as he approached. “How did you come up with such an… unusual name?”

“Oh, well I had two names, because when I was freed, I was one of the few alicorns to have found that I had another’s mind within my head as well. It soon became like a second personality to me. We could talk to each other at certain times and I discovered this other personality was called “Dusty Trail” and he had been a Caravan Guard before the Goddess had him taken. As for me, I don’t know why she took me. My name was Star Watch and I was simply an astronomer in an area of Equestria where an SPP Tower had been destroyed and left a small patch of clear sky.

The doctor found us one day, arguing like a pair of fillies because we both wanted to control our body at the exact same time. She seemed to understand our problem and offered us help. We didn’t have anything better to do or anywhere to go, so we followed her to Mount Coltston and to the Sanctuary where she devoted a lot of her time in helping us and my kind. Over time, she managed to get us to mentally see each other as if we were looking into a mirror and told us, if we were to live peacefully, we had to imagine the mirror’s surface as water and step into it. We both understood that meant merging our two minds into one to create an entirely new personality. We voiced out disagreement at first because we knew we’d forget everything that ever happened to us, but she promised to tell us everything afterwards. After a little debate with each other, we ultimately decided to go through with it. We did forget everything, and before we could hurt ourselves in our confused state, the doctor stepped forward with a recording that told us what we did. So, to honour my previous personalities I decided to combine the names I once had.”

“That’s so sweet,” I said with a smile. “This doctor seems like a really nice pony. I would love to meet them.”

“That is why I’m here. At first light tomorrow, I’ll help guide you back to Sanctuary.”

“Why not later tonight after we’ve had time to rest?” I asked as I relaxed on my mat with Xian.

“Believe me, there are worst things that patrol the desert at night than the wildlife and would kill us all as soon as they see us,” She told us with a shudder.

XXXXX

Unit-1000 raised its head as an internal alert notified it of a change from one of the facility’s sensory systems. The tall skeletal robot turned from the data terminal it was viewing, left the living quarters, and entered an elevator that quickly ascended to the first sub level. This floor contained the control room as well as the access door to the Mark 2 Vault. The machine ducked under the low door frame as it entered the control room of the facility.

“Colonel, the sensory system has detected an anomaly,” The machine said while its flowing holographic mane phased through the console.

“I am aware, Unit-1000,” Colonel Ironside said flatly as his wireframe face appeared on the large monitor screen on the central computer. “What I don’t understand is where this large magical energy signature came from.”

Unit-1000 was silent for a moment while it reviewed the data it had on the sudden appearance of this new energy signature.

“After reviewing my data, I conclude the large energy signature belongs to a powerful magic user,” The machine told its commander.

“Explain!”

“There were two very large energy spikes. The first was when this new signature first appeared. The second was seconds after the first. I conclude the sudden appearance of this energy is from a magic user that had used a Teleportation Spell to get into the facility with them.”

“I see. This may complicate matters further if this new appearance ends up helping them,” He grumbled. “Go to the Vault and put Unit-4’s pod on standby so it’ll be ready if needed, and direct Unit-3 as applicable to the current mission parameters.”

“Yes sir. Right away sir,” The machine said as it turned around to carry out its orders.

“My prediction as permutated. It has fallen upon a path unforeseen by the unexpected change in I-01’s direction,” Ironside muttered to himself.

XXXXX

Early the next morning, we all left the MASA HQ after a quick breakfast with some food we pilfered from the train’s dining car, and a light crystal for myself to top up my power cell. The weather in the Marejave had changed over night from the clear calm to overcast and dull, but also humid, like it could rain at any moment. I had a quick look at my PipBuck which still kept track of the calendar, minus the year for some reason, and found that we were in the month of November, the start of Equestria’s Winter period. This was the desert’s prime season for rainy weather as it was usually dry for the remainder of the year. Sure, there were weather pegasi back then, but they were limited and situated to the towns and cities, not the whole region.

The clothed alicorn waited until we were all outside before she turned and addressed us.

“We will head northwest until we reach the ruins of west Las Pegasus. There we’ll follow the main roads north out of the ruins before taking the dual carriage way again northwest. This will lead us to the mountain road that will then take us all the way to the Sanctuary. If we move at a decent pace and don’t get slowed down too much, we should be able to make it to the mountain road by sundown,” She explained. There was then a gust of wind that blew the alicorn’s long mane done up into a ponytail around and into her face.

Seeing the mare having to claw at her face with a hoof to free herself of her hair sent Xian into a giggle fit.

Donec capilli eius nimis,” The young filly giggled.

“Yeah, it is a little,” I agreed with a chuckle.

“What did she say?” Fruity asked with a lost look on his face.

“Oh, just that Dusty’s hair is a little long that’s all.”

“I should see my stylist about this,” She blushed in embarrassment. “Anyway, are we ready?”

“Why can’t you just teleport us?” Fruity asked. “Won’t that be quicker?”

“One: getting here last night nearly drained me from teleporting such a long distance. Two: teleporting more than one is difficult and more power consuming; and three: I can’t do that, plus I wouldn’t want to risk hurting any of you if the spell backfired,” The alicorn explained with a serious look.

“Ok, I guess we can understand that,” I said with a nod. “Well, I suppose we’ll be as ready as we’ll ever be.”

We fell in step behind the alicorn as we began to transverse the desert on our way towards the mountain. The desert in this area was more gravelly ground with some sand and brown, patchy dead grass which tickled and scratched our skin. Fruity hovered in the air while Nexus and I walked behind Dusty, and Xian sat comfortably on my back.

“I see something up ahead,” Fruity called down to us after a few minutes of traveling and he beat his wings to climb a little higher. “It’s big. Looks like some kind of wreckage.”

“Ah, that would be the downed airship that crashed sometime after the bombs fell,” Dusty Star said in reply to Fruity’s observation.

“An airship?” I asked.

The alicorn nodded as we began to climb a hill. “Yes, when the world went to sh-” She stopped herself from swearing in front of Xian. “Excuse me, to hell, ponies and other beings fled their homes in an attempt to flee the coming fallout.” Once we reached the top of the hill, we could see the ruins of Las Pegasus with the pristine core surrounded by its junk wall, but what caught all our attention was the large wood and black metal airship, laying on its side in a deep trench it had gouged into the ground from its crash. The ship was one of the advanced zeppelins that had a metal encased balloon, and rocket booster engines for propulsion. The black metal, although rusty was not familiar, was rather dark even for Luna-associated military vehicles; and the strange two light blue zig-zag, one being reversed, insignia was unrecognizable either.

“What is this? I’ve never seen anything like this?” I asked as we began to walk down the hill towards the wreckage. “I know we made a lot of airships during the war, but nothing like this.”

“Yeah. Even when the Enclave began building airships of their own, they never looked anything like this,” Fruity added.

“I don’t know the full details, but the Doctor told me the ship belonged to somepony called the, um, err, what was it, um, the Storm… King. I think… yeah, the Storm King,” Dusty said while scrunching up her regal face as she tried to remember what she had been told. Seeing such an expression on an alicorn looked a little comical, but I kept my face straight as I didn’t want to be rude. “According to the Doctor, he had been a known threat to Equestria before Equestria’s technological boom.”

“What is one of his ships doing in Equestria if he wasn’t such a threat anymore?” I asked.

“I don’t know, though a theory suggests he might have planned a surprise attack on Equestria while it was busy fighting the Zebras. Considering where this ship is, I would guess he picked the wrong time to try, and his forces might have got caught up in the crossfire of the Megaspell/Balefire bomb bombardment that destroyed the world,” She said as we began to pass the large, groaning wreck.

“Hey. There could be some good loot inside then,” Fruity called down to us as he landed on the hull by an open boarding hatch.

“If we want to make good progress, we need all the time we have in the day,” Dusty Star urged.

“Oh come on. Five minutes won’t hurt us,” He said before he dove inside.

“Mister Fruity, time is of the essence. The longer we dawdle, the sooner Ironside may find us,” Nexus called up to him.

Suddenly, Fruity zoomed out of the hatch with a panicked look on his face. “Ok, you’re right, lets go, like, RIGHT NOW!” He urged as he came down and began to push against my rump.

“Um Fruity. What did you do?” I asked with a hint of fear.

“Nothing. I just realised he was right, now come on, let’s go,” He urged.

“Fruity!”

“I’m detecting a surge in energy from inside the ship,” Nexus pointed out.

“What did you do?” I asked again with urgency.

Fruity gulped but still pushed against me. “Ok, um, I may have triggered a trap and, um, well its ammunition stores are about to blow,” He explained in a panic.

Mine and Dusty’s eyes widened in shock, and we all quickly began to run for the ruins. We crossed a road after we ran a good distance from the ship, and found a large warehouse building to which we all took cover behind its tall brick wall. Just as soon as we dove behind the wall, there was a tremendous explosion from back in the desert as the ship exploded. The ground rumbled as a shockwave passed through it. We ducked down low when a piece of the ship’s hull smashed into the wall and took a chunk out of it, before it crashed into the ground behind us. When the debris rain settled, we all let out a collective sigh of relief and stepped back out from behind the wall. As we looked to where the ship was, we found nothing but a black mushroom cloud rising into the darkening sky.

“Next time Fruity, do as you’re bloody well told, please,” I sighed.

“Heh, yes ma’am.”

“We should definitely move now. That explosion will have alerted anything close by,” Dusty warned.

“Oh Celestia, yea, let’s go,” I agreed. “I don’t want to be anywhere near here if this attracted anymore of those robots.”

“You do not need to worry about that, Crystal. I will be able to alert you since I can detect power signatures,” Nexus explained, which put my fears to rest. “We Infiltrators carry a distinct signature. It was how I was able to track you after all.”

I twisted my neck around, so I could look back at Xian who tightly held my neck and shivered in fright from the sudden danger. “Hey, are you alright?” I asked softly.

The young filly nodded with a nervous gulp. “Y-yes mummy,” She squeaked.

“Don’t worry, it’s alright,” I reassured her as I gave her a motherly nuzzle to the cheek.

“I must warn you, the West Pegasus Ruins are home to foul Raiders and is in much worse shape than Hayside and the ruins on the east side of the city,” Dusty said.

I nodded and used my nano-fibre tail to draw out Lucky 13. Fruity primed his battlesaddle and Nexus unsheathed his Riot Shotgun. Armed and ready, we pushed on into the ruins.

XXXXX

The west ruins were indeed a lot worse off than on the east side of the city. I came to the conclusion that the condition was a result of this side of the city being the industrial and business districts. Back before the bombs fell, this area of the city saw a lot of traffic, be it train, cart, or heavy goods vehicle; and the buildings themselves had to endure the stresses of all the industrial works that went on in and around them.

The main roads we followed were strewn with rubble, far more rubble and debris than back in Hayside. It was so bad that the pavements were almost completely hidden under the destruction. The roads also showed great deals of damage with craters, holes, and large cracks that littered every several feet of its surface.

Our first indication that we were about to enter Raider territory was when we began to see the mutilated bodies hung up on meat hooks and chains from the streetlamps. Classic Raider decoration. I had to tell Xian to look away because I didn’t want her to get anymore traumatized by such horrendous and horrific sights such as those.

Soon, we came to two large wooden walls that spanned the width of the street and overlapped each other, but with a gap in between where they overlapped so we could pass through. Horrifyingly, the faces of the wooden walls also had disembowelled and headless corpses nailed to them.

“For fuck sake, these raiders are more deranged than the ones we’ve ran into back in Manehattan,” Fruity remarked in disgust.

I had to agree, but I couldn’t verbally reply since the stench of death and rot, and the sight had me retching.

“Yes, the Raider band that operates in this district is a little unhinged. Having access to a large supply of chems and frequently using them has made them more psychotic than the average Raider gang. Being so drugged up can also sometimes make them difficult to kill since the chems can make them ignore pain or boost their abilities for a period of time. It is why these Raiders are often referred to as the ‘Junkies’”. Dusty explained loud enough for us to hear as she slowly inched her way through the gap and looked into the street beyond. “Coast is clear, but stay on your guard.”

“If there is one, there is a bunch of those smeg pots,” Fruity sighed.

“You got that right,” Dusty agreed.

I raised my wings to hide Xian from view, as well as to protect her.

We hastily crossed an intersection and began to walk along a rubble-strewn road that went alongside a large Coltvega factory. The brick wall on the street side was largely intact, but the huge glass windows were all broken and put-through, leaving giant gaping holes in the side of the building. As we walked, we noticed that the brick wall had been plastered with lots of posters. Many of the posters were illegible by now, but the ones that we could still make out in various stages of deterioration, were all propaganda posters to rally ponies against the zebra threat. However, there were two posters that were not propaganda. One of them was a recruitment poster with a picture of Princess Luna asking ponies to join the Luna Guard, and the other was a promotional poster for the Summer Sun Celebration with a picture of Princess Celestia on it, with a happy smile and her radiant sun at the top. She certainly didn’t look that happy a few years after the war begun. The most interesting thing about these two posters was that they had been vandalised by somepony at some point. In dark purple paint, the words, “Open up your eyes” was written on the Celestia poster; and in hot pink paint, the words, “And behold the fading light” was written on the Luna poster.

“And behold the fading light?” I repeated in confusion as I didn’t understand the meaning of the graffiti on the posters.

“I believe these posters were referencing how Equestria was losing hope the longer the war raged on,” Dusty Star said after a quick glance at the posters.

“Movement up ahead. Six targets,” Nexus said as he crouched to make himself a small target and harder to see among the rubble on the floor.

“Crap,” Fruity exclaimed. “Quickly, before they see us,” He said and ushered us back and around the corner of the Coltvega factory wall.

Nexus made an electronic sound that I think was meant to simulate a sigh. “If only I still had my Pipe Sniper Rifle.”

“Did it break?” I asked when we got into cover to which he nodded. “What do we do now?” I added.

“We could take them on,” Fruity suggested.

“Yes, we could,” Dusty agreed but then sighed. “However, that would be a bad idea.”

“Why?”

“Well, Crystal’s right eye still hasn’t regenerated yet.” She looked at me with a quizzical look, as if wondering why my eye was still exposed. I was still wondering that myself. “The glow from the robotic eye, as well as the Mark 2’s there, would alert them. We also cannot afford to waste any time fighting them. We really need to get to the mountain road before the sun goes down.” She stressed the last part.

I looked around and noticed we were at the intersection. East would take us deeper into the ruins, while going West would take us across a bridge that crossed a dual-carriageway to more industrial complexes. Going west would be a bad idea as well, I thought, since it would put us in the open for a good distance due to us being on top of a bridge with no cover.

“We got two options. We either fight the raiders or we take the road to the right and find a way around,” I suggested.

Fruity and Dusty nodded in agreement.

“If we find a path to the junk wall, it should be relatively safe since the security inside the city has snipers to keep the filth away. We can follow the wall until we are out of raider territory. It may add a little time to our tight schedule, but once we get out of the ruins we can run to make up the time,” Dusty said before she edged her head out from behind our cover to see where the raiders were. “Alright. They have their backs to us. If you move quickly and one at a time to reduce sound, you should make it undetected. I will stay here to observe them, but once you are all safe on the opposite side, I will teleport over to you.”

We all got ourselves ready, and when she gave us the signal to move, Fruity used his wings to propel himself across the road and to the other side of the intersection quickly. I told Xian to hold on tight as I did the exact same thing a few moments after. Nexus joined us shortly after, and we signalled to Dusty that we had all made it. She looked back up the street to be sure the Raiders were not looking her way, before she charged her horn and in a flash of blue light, disappeared. With a crackle and a pop, she reappeared beside us in another blue flash.

“Bloody hell,” Fruity yelped as her sudden reappearance startled him.

“Sorry, but we must hurry,” She said as she began to lead us again down the road towards the New Pegasus junk wall.

XXXXX

We must have walked for about an hour, navigating the ruins and blocked streets until we found our way to the junk wall. When we left the ruins and entered the cleared area around the wall, we soon noticed a glint of light that came from above it. When I looked up, my synthetic vision was able to see through the glare of the reflection of sunlight, and I saw a Desert Ranger in full armour lay on a roof in a makeshift sniper’s nest, with a large scoped rifle aimed in our direction. Thankfully, he didn’t shoot. I supposed he could tell we were not raiders, we certainly didn’t look like any. I was, however, was surprised that he didn’t shoot at Dusty.

The noonday sun was now baring down on us through the clouds, and the day’s temperature had quickly risen. Fruity was back to complaining about the unbearable heat and fanned himself with his wings in an attempt to keep cool. Since I grew up here, hot weather like this was nothing I couldn’t handle. The sky itself was still cloudy, but it seemed to have gotten darker, which told us it could rain at any moment.

We had no choice but to enter the ruins again after following the wall for a while, because if we continued to follow the wall we would soon end up going too far off course. While we picked our way through the ruins, we stumbled upon a huge gathering of Raiders. We immediately hid ourselves as we observed the Raiders gathered around a makeshift stage, which to my surprise and horror had gallows on it.

A Raider that was dressed in some seriously creepy metal armour with a metal faceplate that covered the top half of her face, including her eyes, addressed the crowd.

“We may steal, rape, murder, and pillage the wasteland. We may be seen as psychopaths and insane by the common pony, but we have some morals of our own. We are not true monsters. Except, there have been a couple of ponies that have felt that they could do the same to their own comrades. We do not tolerate treason or any traitorous acts in this gang,” The supposed leader of the group yelled to the crowd. “So, to entertain you all today, we have a double execution of the two traitors who thought they could rape and kill their partners!”

The Raider crowd erupted in angry, displeased shouts, calling for blood and vengeance for their comrades. We didn’t have to wait long before a mare that was wearing just a harness was dragged up onto the stage by two burly Raider stallions.

“You have been nicknamed the Black Widow because before you were caught, any of the stallions you bedded died from poison. I am very disappointed in you. You had the makings to be a fine Elite,” The leader said before she nodded to the two stallions. They seized her legs, one getting her left legs while the other got her right. The leader held up a rock to the crowd for them to see it before she then placed it on the floor stage. The stallions then began to move the struggling raider mare. They turned her over, so that she was on her back and down on the rock, poking her in the back and against her spine. Then, another stallion laid a large iron sheet on top of the mare which freed the two stallions, so that they could grab a series of heavy metal weights. The stallions dropped each weight onto the iron sheet one by one, the mare screaming in agony with each one as the added weight forced the rock deeper into her back. Finally, with one last heavy iron weight dropped onto the iron plate, there was a resounding crack as the rock punched through the mare’s spine and killed her under the weight.

“Oh, sweet Celestia,” I breathed in horror and felt queasy from the torturous execution.

The crowd cheered and screamed for more. I couldn’t believe they were this vile. The two stallions left and returned not long after with another stallion, stripped of any clothing and looking like he had a fight with a walrus and lost. He had bruises, cuts, and lumps all over his body. The stallions pushed him up onto the stage where the leader addressed him. “You are no better than she was. What is worse is that you would also defile the corpse,” She growled. “For you, your death will be a special kind of agony,” She declared, and with a nod, the two stallions hauled him to the gallows. One put the noose around his neck, and the other hauled him up into the air. The stallion gasped and kicked his legs in the air before he was suddenly dropped. I heard him coughing and sputtering. I could see he was trying to scream out but after having his windpipe crushed like that, he was left speechless. He lay on the floor, unable to move after nearly being choked to death as one of the stallions used a knife to stab into his belly and cut it open while he was still alive.

“Oh, by the goddesses, what the hell,” Fruity exclaimed in disgust at what was going on.

The stallion cut the Raider captive’s belly open enough for him to pull out his intestines, again while he was still alive. I raised my wings to keep Xian from seeing this horrible display of a slow and painful execution. I could hear the Raider captive’s weak and broken cries of pain after being choked. To make matters even worse, one of the stallions came back with a large axe with a curved blade.

“Oh no, come on. He’s had enough as it is, let him die already,” Fruity quietly said.

I didn’t want to watch what I knew was about to come, but with one eye still exposed I couldn’t simply close them. Before I could decide on what to do, a weak cry of agony reached my ears. I found myself staring at the stage where the executioners had used the axe to hack off one of the Raider captive’s forelegs. I cried out in horror when they repeated this process for his other limbs until they then took his head. The leading mare smiled in delight as she grabbed his head by the mane and then dipped it into a barrel of boiling pitch, before showing it to the cheering crowd.

“Just what the fuck did I just watch?” I shrieked in outrage.

“I believe it was an ancient execution method called, “Hung, drawn, and quartered,”” Dusty grimaced.

“What and the what now?” Fruity asked, also in shock to what we just witnessed.

“It is an ancient execution method that was outlawed a couple of centuries after the fall of Princess Luna because of its brutality, often used on ponies that worshipped the night princess. Back then, the Sun Goddess didn’t have such a good grip on the nation due to its fracturing after the fall of the Night Princess, and for a while the Solar Guard tried and executed Princess Luna worshippers as traitors to the crown by making them out to be Nightmare Moon sympathisers. It wasn’t until the Sun Goddess managed to fully get control of the nation that she was able to put a stop to it and outlaw that awful method,” Dusty Star explained with a grim expression on her face.

“And I thought living in the wasteland was dark,” Fruity commented dryly.

“Oh yes, back then it was a very dark time. There was a reason they were called the ‘Dark Ages’” Dusty agreed.

The very idea you could be put to death for believing in one of the princesses, despite the fact one of them fell to darkness, and land yourself in a situation that could mean your death made me cringe.

“We should move. We have stood here long enough, and these Raiders will soon spread out soon,” The alicorn warned.

I nodded, and crouch-walked to minimise my chance of being seen. I practically crawled across the cracked road until I successfully got behind the wall of an intact building. Everypony else in my party followed suit until we were all safely hidden.

Dusty looked out from our cover to survey the area and sighed with relief. “Cost is clear, and I see a way we can get through several blocks worth of territory without being seen,” She said as she gestured to a large brick building that was largely intact across the street. “That is, of course, there are no Raiders inside.”

Across the street was a distribution centre for Adagio Records. A big smile spread across my muzzle as I recognised the building from a school trip I attended back when I was a filly. I even got to meet the legendary rock-star Adagio Dazzle herself. That was a good memory. It made me happy to see her music business had managed to keep going even throughout the war. I hoped she and her sisters made it to a good Stable.

The distribution centre had a two-story office building at the front of the complex with a large “Adagio Records” billboard on top that, to my joy, was largely intact. Behind the office block was a larger rectangular building, which was the warehouse for the records and holotapes, as well as the sound and music equipment. The floor size of the warehouse was about as large as the average hoofball pitch, so around hundred metres.

Another check to make sure the coast was clear, and we quickly made our way to the glass double doors that made up the front entrance and pushed them open. We entered a large reception and waiting room area. There was a curved wooden counter that faced the entrance, along with several stylish couches in the waiting area. Nothing that remained in here looked cheap and it had aged well. Everything had the expected thick layer of dust and grime for two hundred years of no maintenance. However, the material everything was made from seemed to have held up well. At the back of the lobby, there was a set of stairs to the offices above, and another set of double doors to the right of the stairs. If we didn’t have a schedule to keep, we might have opted to check out the offices for anything worth salvaging, but instead, we pushed on through the doors. They opened into a short corridor that would take us to the warehouse, but once we opened the doors, we became cautious. The metal security doors, the type you tend to need a key card for, was already open. One of the double doors was still in place, but the other looked to have been forced open as it was bent and buckled with signs of being hit hard with a blunt heavy object repeatedly.

“Be on your guard,” Dusty Star warned as her long, spiralled horn began to glow dimly.

We nodded, and one by one, we carefully made our way into the warehouse. It was indeed a large building. Wide, tall, and long with a few rows of racking and shelving for all the stored music equipment and records. This also, unfortunately, made for a perfect ambush area for Raiders. They could easily have the high ground and jump us from anywhere.

Suddenly, there was a cry of alarm from Fruity before a loud smack reverberated throughout the warehouse. We whirled around to find him standing next to a desk with a toy monkey now headless.

“Fruity, are you trying to get us caught?” I seethed.

“It was one of those Celestia damned monkeys. It was gonna clap its symbols, I swear,” He said in a panic.

“It would be wise to dispose of any of them as soon as you can. Raiders do sometimes make them into triggers for some of their traps,” Dusty agreed as she began to lead us down an aisle that was full of vinyl records and holotapes. Thankfully, this aisle wasn’t as tall as the other aisles, and would at least give us some warning in case there were some Raiders in the racking.

As we slowly and quietly made our way down the aisle, we heard a metal door at other end of the warehouse bang open and crash against the wall. I cringed at the sudden noise but continued walking. While we made our way through the aisle, we looked around. Some of the taller racking had collapsed over time, and the shelving planks inside the sections of racking formed ramps. We could see several areas where Raiders could have got the high ground on us, but there was nopony here. With nothing to worry about so far inside, I took the opportunity to loot a holotape album. I never got to enjoy the Dazzlings latest album.

We soon made it to the open back door, again buckled and bashed open, and slowly made our way outside into the almost black cloud sky afternoon.

“It’s gonna rain any second. I can feel it,” Fruity sighed.

“Ma’ams, sir. Raiders,” Nexus alerted when we were all outside and in the loading bay for the wagons or trucks.

“Oh fuck me, an Alicorn. Crackers, get the Boss,” One of the Raiders, standing on the top of some scaffolding, yelled before he pulled out a pipe gun.

Dusty’s horn glowed very brightly before she threw her head up and released a beam of blue magic into the air. When the beam reached about a hundred feet in the air, it cascaded down all around us in a dome of energy. We watched as the Raider that had been told to get their boss run, and the magical energy wall came down in front of him. He didn’t slow down or stop and ran face first into the energy, and bounced off it like it was a solid wall.

“Ugh, I just cast a force field. I don’t know how much longer, uh, I can keep this up for, uhhh, my green sisters can do shields better than me,” She groaned.

I quickly picked the now scared filly off my back, and hid her behind a post box so she’d be safe and out of the way. I then pulled out Lucky 13 and joined my friends as we prepared to engage the trapped Raiders.

The Raider that shouted to get help jumped down from the scaffolding, and was soon joined by three more Raiders, including the one that ran into the magic shield.

“Well fellas, we got ourselves some fresh meat, and once we cut the horn off that alicorn bitch, she’ll make a good fuck toy,” A big burly stallion raider grunted. He wore some makeshift armour that formed a mesh cage around his neck and head.

“Don’t you dare come near my horn with your filthy hooves, you lowlife scumbags,” Dusty threatened.

“You idiot, two of them are robots,” A mare in a dark overcoat with some metal pieces added to it. She had a similar face plate to the mare from the execution we saw earlier, and she climbed up onto a broken-down truck cab.

“Aww, I was looking forward to some fresh pussy,” He grumbled.

“When this is over, you can fuck the zebra filly all you want,” The mare sighed with a shake of her head.

“Oh boy!” He cheered excitedly.

I gasped in outrage that he would want to defile and violate my innocent adoptive daughter, as well as the mare’s casual offering of my daughter like it wasn’t even a bad thing to do.

“You so much as come anywhere near my daughter,” I growled threateningly. “I swear to Celestia I will crush every single bone in your body and make you beg for death.”

“Damn Crystal,” Fruity said in slight surprise, but it quickly faded when he primed his battlesaddle. “You fellas just pissed off the wrong mare.”

“Kill them all!” Came a shout from one of the Raiders, followed by two other Raiders as they charged at us with melee weapons drawn. One of them held a broken Zebra Legionnaire Sword in his mouth, while the other held half a pool cue as a blunt weapon. I quickly pulled up Lucky 13 and aimed for one of the Raiders as they charged, but the faceplated mare fired a pipegun and its .38 calibre round tore through my tail fibres, causing a lot of pain for me, and I dropped Lucky 13 as a reaction.

“Ah-ah-ow!” I cried in pain as I flicked my tail.

“Smeg, Crystal!” Fruity exclaimed before he fired at the Raider that had shot my tail. The Raider jumped down from the truck-cab and took cover as the plasma bolts streamed towards her.

“Ma’am, watch out!” Nexus warned as the sword-armed Raider charged for Dusty.

“Uh, I can’t move while I’m generating this shield,” She grumbled.

“Die, you mutant reject!” Yelled the Raider as he swung his head around to stab Dusty with the broken and jagged edge of the sword. However, instead of hearing a cry of pain, we instead heard a metallic clang and a grunt. When I looked over, I saw Nexus had rushed over and put himself between Dusty and the Raider as he attacked, and his sword bounced off his titanium alloy head.

“Th-thank you,” Dusty panted. Sweat beaded on her forehead as the aura around her horn began to waver.

“My pleasure,” Nexus said before he faced the Raider. He quickly kicked the sword away and then gave the Raider a back-hoof smack to the head. I heard the crunch of the jaw bone as it broke from where I stood, as the hit connected with his jaw and sent him flying head over hooves and onto his back.

“Fuck! Use the Party Popper!” The faceplated mare yelled.

“Party Popper incoming!” Another yelled, and from the corner of a building nearby, a small cylindrical object was thrown towards us.

My threat warning immediately flashed red after the announcement of the Party Popper, but I didn’t know what that was or where to look to anticipate the attack. My attention was focused on the pool cue wielding Raider that had attempted to flank us.

“Oh, fuck no!” Fruity exclaimed in alarm. He spread his wings and quickly shot up into the air and intercepted the thrown object. He caught it with his wing, and with a powerful flap, he flung it straight up into the air. I looked up shortly after I tackled the pool cue Raider into a metal dumpster, which knocked him out with the force of the tackle, just in time to see the object Fruity deflected explode into a ball of electricity.

“What in the…” I froze when I felt the familiar buzz in the back of my head from an influx of new knowledge as it was forced into my brain by my electronic one. The data I had been supplied with revealed to me that the cylindrical object was a Disruption Grenade, and that it would have been extremely damaging to me or possibly fatal depending on how much charge was in it or my proximity to it.

I felt the pressure wave from the grenade wash over me when I turned to face the couple of remaining Raiders. I took a step before I stopped and groaned. My vision began to swim and filled with a thin haze of static, and my limbs felt heavy and unresponsive.

“Warning! System error!” Flashed across my vision in block red letters.

“Nexus, are-are you alright?” I faintly heard Dusty gasp in worry over the static in my ears.

“Hmmmm, no. Disruption Grenade may have been out of lethal effective range but…” I looked over in time to see the armoured robot almost topple over. He was moving like he was drunk. “It still had an effective weaker radius. I’m sorry, but I need to perform a system restart to be effective again,” He said as he lay down and began his reboot process.

There was a scream which got cut short. I struggled to turn my head, but when I looked in the direction of the interrupted scream, I saw a puddle of green goo start to drip down the side of the building, and Fruity swoop down to land beside me.

“Shit, are you ok?” He asked in worry.

“Been affected by that grenade,” I moaned.

“Damn it, I’m sorry,” He apologised.

“It’s ok. You couldn’t have known,” I assured him before I heard a dark chuckle from the truck.

We turned to face the last Raider and she had managed to pull out a missile launcher from somewhere. My guess would be that she had one stored away where we couldn’t see it, and just popped it out while we were busy. I grunted while I waited for my body to sort itself out. Fruity moved and stood in front of me, to protect and shield me. It made my heart soar for him and ache at the same time. It made me feel happy and loved by him that he was willing to put his life on the line, but it also hurt and pained me because I could lose him from this.

As we stared at the Raider, I noticed the shield began to collapse around us. “I have had enough,” Dusty growled angrily. Her horn flashed, and a magic bullet was fired from her horn. The shot was so fast the Raider didn’t have time to react at all, and the small, bright blue pulse of magic collided with her metal faceplate around the left eye area. The force of the impact pierced right through it, and tore out at least half of her head. The Raider’s body flopped off the truck cab with the missile launcher, and hit the cracked tarmac with a wet thud.

“Raiders, wasteland rubbish. We must go before any more show up,” She warned just as Nexus woke up again without any problems caused by the Disruption Grenade.

I sluggishly picked up Lucky 13 and holstered it before I turned to Dusty. “Ugh, which way?” I groaned.

“This way,” The alicorn said as she led us into an alley between two half-destroyed buildings. I put all my will power into getting my legs to move quicker as I tried to take my steps as quickly as my hampered body would allow.

“C’mon girl, mush,” Fruity grunted as he pushed at my rear, which made me blush when I felt his shoulder press into my rump.

“Don’t worry about Xian, Ma’am and Mr Fruity. She is safe with me,” The newly rebooted Nexus said. Xian tentatively hugged his neck as she whimpered.

As we moved, the static in my eyes and ears began to fade, and my limbs became gradually more responsive as the effects of the Disruption Grenade began to wear off. Thankfully, we managed to get through the alley and out into the other street before the Raiders came to investigate the commotion we caused.

It took a good five more minutes after the fight before I was back to one hundred percent functionality. Well, as good as I was before the fight started anyway. I didn’t like having to refer to myself as a machine because when I talked about myself returning to full functionality, it made me feel like an object. But it was my robotic body that was keeping me alive. I sighed as we walked the streets towards the outskirts in the northwest of the ruins. I hoped this pony that knows what I am can answer the questions I have.

XXXXX

“WARNING! DISRUPTION ENERGY DETECTED!”

“Eep!” Pixie jumped when her automated warning system alerted her to the use of an anti-mechanoid weapon. “What-what was th-oh right, it was just my internal warning system. I… um… I forgot about that,” The disguised robot sighed and shook her head as she ran at a brisk pace. She had to move quickly if she was to intercept I-01 and I-02 IS. As she weaved through the ruins of Northern Las Pegasus, she caught sight of the bright lights of the core of New Pegasus as they began to illuminate the area around the ruins. She blinked in wonder and slowed to a trot as she became lost in thought.

“Wait, don’t I have a magic show in the Canterlot Royal Hotel this weekend?” She asked herself in confusion while she ground to a halt.

“Well little lady, what brings you to our rough neighbourhood?” A gruff voice asked before a unicorn stallion in a beat-up denim jacket, and armed with an aluminium hoofball bat with two circular saw blades attached to it, stepped out from behind a wall.

“Eek!” She squeaked in surprise and shrunk in on herself as she felt nervous and afraid.

“Ohh, don’t be afraid little lady,” He began with a sinister grin. “I won’t hurt you… much.”

“No please,” She begged as she backed away slowly.

He just grinned all the more as he used his magic to raise the modified metal bat, and then swung it.

“No!” She cried in fright and threw up a foreleg to shield her face from the strike.

“Self Defence Protocol initiated,” Pixie said before her eyes became lifeless and her irises took on a crimson glow. Then, she lowered her foreleg and stared at her attacker.

The stallion stopped his attack mid-swing when he noticed the red eyes. “What the fuck?!”

“Target identified. Exterminating,” The machine said in a monotone voice as her horn glowed with magic.

“Wait, what?”

However, before the stallion could react, a powerful beam of pure concentrated magic was released from Unit-3’s horn. The stallion’s eyes widened in dread and he tried to avoid the beam, but he had stood still being stunned too long and the powerful beam of energy consumed half his face, neck, and barrel. The intensity of the beam burned away his flesh and bone, and left him with a huge gaping hole in the side of his body as he fell over dead while smoking from the power of the magical attack.

“Threat neutralised. Re-establishing control.” Once that was said, her eyes flashed from crimson back to blue, and then widened alarm.

“WHAT JUST HAPPENED!?” She screamed as she regained her senses and saw the smoking dead body of the thug.

I triggered your SDP because for some reason, you were going to allow that pony to attack you and possibly discover you when he hit you. That was something I could not allow if you let him escape,” Unit-1000’s voice said to her over her communication link.

“O-oh. S-sorry ma’am,” She said sadly.

Next time Unit-3, defend yourself. Do not make me regret sending you out there,” Unit-1000 said before she left the communication link.

Her ears wilted as she hung her head like a scolded filly, and began to trudge onwards towards the west. “Y-yes, my princess,” She said quietly to herself.

XXXXX

“We need to pick up the pace,” Dusty urged as we finally made it to the dual carriage way that would take us north out of the city and towards the mountain road, which would lead us to the Alicorn Sanctuary.

“Celestia almighty, why is it so bloody important we get to this mountain road as soon as possible?” Fruity asked in annoyance at the umpteenth time of being reminded that we needed to hurry.

The blue alicorn looked up and actually looked a little worried as she examined the sky. The sun, despite the heavy cloud cover, was on its downward ark and headed for the distant mountains, which meant the area would be bathed in shadow soon. Not only that, but we also only had a few more hours of daylight left.

“Ok, the reason I’m so intent on us making it at least to the mountain road at the base of MT Coltston as quickly as possible is because the Steel Rangers are known to patrol this area of the Marejave in large groups at night. They have been seen in groups of five to eight, and all of them have been seen to be armed with at least one heavy weapon,” She explained. “We need to avoid them at all cost, because they will kill me on sight and you as well Mr Fruity, but would likely attempt to capture Crystal and Nexus because they would see them as technology that worth taking back. They would also likely kill the little filly too because she is a zebra.”

“Steel Rangers? Out here in the middle of the ass end of nowhere?” Fruity asked in surprised as he hovered above us.

“Yes, they are all in a bit of a steer because of a discover that was unearthed back in Manehattan,” She said while she gave me a knowing look.

I blinked as I didn’t know what she meant.

“Maybe you noticed the increased activity of the Rangers when you visited Pondale?” She continued.

“Wait,” I gasped when I remembered how the Rangers talked to us when they caught us. They seemed to know what I was, and they were kinda jumpy about it. “Are you saying they know about me?”

“Not you per say, but they know there are skeletal robots out there that can imitate ponies, and that has them all riled up and suspicious of each other and anything in full armour,” She explained.

“How do you even know this dribble?” Fruity asked.

“The Dr has access to a radio tower and she has been able to tune into Steel Ranger broadcasts. We have been able to monitor transmissions, so that we can help any ponies or alicorns to avoid and direct as needed. It is how we learned how they found out about what transpired at Paradigm Cybernetics.”

“Well cock,” Fruity sighed. “Alright then, we better hurry this shindig along then before they crash the party.”

I grumbled to myself in annoyance as we followed the road out of the city and into the desert, making our way toward the mountain. It was our fault we attracted the attention of the Steel Rangers, and now we had another faction to worry about. From what I’ve learned, the Steel Rangers of today, of the post war era, were not the soldiers of Equestria that fought for peace and freedom, but instead were violent techno-hoarders that scoured the land for pre-war tech, and ruthlessly took it from ponies if they believed it was something that should belong to them. They also didn’t care who they killed, be it innocent ponies, raiders, or any of the wasteland monsters. If they were between them and the piece of tech they were after, then they were just an obstacle to be removed to them.

The roads stretching out into the desert wasteland were littered with the wrecks of carts, wagons, and vehicles abandoned long ago. The road that would have traffic going out of the city was very full, almost gridlocked compared to the side going to the city. I could only imagine the chaos and fear of the evacuation for those ponies trying to escape the city before or as the bombs began to fall across Equestria. The sight was made worse by the dark shadow of the clouds above us. Thick, rolling black clouds filled the sky now, and the setting sun struggled to pierce the thick canopy.

My wings twitched. “The air feels funny,” I said as we walked on the desert sand to avoid the clogged-up motorway.

Fruity looked up and frowned. “There’s a storm coming. I give it a couple of hours before it unleashes its full force on the Marejave.”

“So that’s why my wings feel all tingly?” I asked.

He nodded before he looked over to Nexus who was carrying a sleeping Xian. “Hey, Half-eaten lollipop head. I hope you don’t rust cause this storm is gonna piss it down.”

The machine didn’t respond to the jab while he continued to carry Xian. I just sighed and shook my head. When would he give Nexus a break?

Several hours passed as we followed the road while the light of the day faded to almost complete darkness. The sun had set enough that the northern mountains blocked its light, and with the storm almost on top of us, the darkness would get worse. On a positive note, we were just a couple of miles from the mountain road now.

We unfortunately couldn’t cut across the desert to reach the mountain road sooner because straying from the road far enough would have been dangerous. The areas close to the mountain’s base and what used to be farmland was now inhabited by Paradores and Raiders or worse. We didn’t have the time to waste on fighting the bugs or more Raiders, and we didn’t want to attract any more unwanted attention, so it was best we stuck with the road.

The wind had begun to pick up as we neared the mountain road, which was a clear sign to the inevitable arrival of the coming storm. Unfortunately, just when the turn off for the mountain road came into view, bright spotlights also appeared up head.

“Ah shit. Steel Rangers,” Fruity groaned as he pointed toward the beams of light.

“I count six in total, and like Dusty said, they are all armed with one heavy weapon each, four of which have anti-infantry weaponry,” Nexus clarified.

“Damnit to Sombra, I knew this would happen,” Dusty grumbled in annoyance. “Quickly everypony, over here and huddle close, and do not move or make a sound,” She ordered as she walked away from the road and about twenty feet into the dessert. We quickly gathered around the alicorn, and once we were all around her, she lit her horn and it flashed brightly. “There, I just cast a cloaking spell around us. Nexus, you should power down to standby mode just in case they have energy scanners. You are ok, Crystal, since your secondary power cell only activates when you fly,” She explained. We all tensed when the beams of helmet lights began to wash over us as the Steel Ranger patrol began to walk past us down the road toward the city. “Do not move and do not speak. This stealth field operates in the same principal to a Stealth Buck, it will keep us unseen but not unheard,” She whispered loud enough for just us to hear while we watched the Rangers.

A Ranger stopped and looked in our direction, his light aimed right as us. It lit up the ground as he looked in our direction. I bit my lip in nervousness when another Ranger, one that wore a shiner and more decorative Paladins armour, approached him. I slowly edged towards the now on-standby Nexus to be close to Xian. I made sure to keep my movements slow and steady, so I wouldn’t disturb the spell.

“There is nothing here, Knight Sterling. Are you sure that scanner of yours didn’t have a technical hiccup?” The Paladin asked as he drew the Knight’s attention.

“I swear I detected a strong magical pulse from over here,” The Knight lifted his foreleg and checked a foreleg-mounted computer, similar to a PipBuck but not, and tapped at the screen with his hoof before he frowned. “I guess it was nothing. It isn’t detecting anything at all right now,” He sighed. “Sorry sir.”

“C’mon, we best head back to the bunker. Heavens knows we need to give the Elder some good news soon. We are all getting a bit too jumpy,” The Paladin said as he guided the Knight along and away.

“Yea, that spy robot thing has really got to him,” Sterling agreed as he turned and began to follow with the rest of the Rangers.

“MOVEMENT!” A Ranger yelled from down the road that made the two that were near us stop.

“What is it?” The Paladin demanded.

“Multiple small contacts,” Another yelled before there were a couple of barks, and two coyotes ran in terror through the power armoured ponies, turning off the road and into the desert toward us. They then split apart and ran in two different directions as if they were being chased by something, but thankfully before they ran into the cloaking field.

“Coyotes.” The Paladin sighed. “Nothing to worry about.”

Suddenly, a group of five more came charging through the Rangers. These were different. They had the body of a coyote, but had the heads and tails of snakes, rattle snakes to be specific. What sort of monstrosities are these?

One of the Rangers began to rev up his minigun as the mutant creatures ran by them, but he was quickly stopped by the Paladin. “Shit, Nightstalkers. Whoa, easy there. They are not interested in us and heavy weapon usage in such close proximity to each other would be a very bad idea Knight, so hold your fire.”

“Yes sir,” The Ranger said as he stopped his weapon and continued on down the road once the mutants had passed them.

“Fruity, what are those?” I whispered as the mutant creatures charged passed us as they pursued the coyotes. They hissed in a snake-like fashion, grunted in a weird almost canine way, and made a distinct rattle as they ran by us.

“You’re asking me? I’m not from around here,” Fruity retorted with surprise as he watched them run into the darkness.

“Ugh, they are Nightstalkers, uhhh, a mutant species that began to appear in the Marejave at at least hundred and fifty years ago,” Dusty grunted. “The Doctor theories they are actually the result of genetic tampering because of the hybrid combination of coyote and snake.”

We waited for a good five, almost ten minutes to be sure the Rangers had moved a good distance away before Dusty dropped the cloaking spell. She panted with exhaustion and her face glistened with sweat from the effort of keeping the spell going. Nexus woke up again as he came out of standby shortly after the spell ended. Once we were all ready, we turned for the mountain road. We only took two steps before there was an almighty loud boom in the sky, and then the entire area was illuminated by a flash of light. The boom of thunder made Xian scream in terror, to which she dove off Nexus’s back and in between my legs as she trembled. To our chagrin, the thunder was followed by a heavy torrent of rain that came down in sheets.

“Just like being back in Manehattan,” Fruity joked.

“This is nothing like the Manehattan storms,” I grumbled while I used my wings like an umbrella. “Ugh, this is a wild storm, not controlled by magic, only by the laws of nature. Similar to the Everfree but a little different because of the desert environment,” I explained just as the wind picked up more.

“C’mon now, everypony. We best hurry before the storm gets any worse,” Dusty urged.

We nodded, and once Xian was safely on my back again, we quickly began to gallop for the mountain road.

XXXXX

“Arrived at Intercept Point. Target absent. Scanning!” Pixie said to herself, her eyes still half-lidded and glowing crimson. “I-01’s Power signature detected.” The disguised machine turned north but stopped when it saw Steel Rangers off in the distance.

“ALERT!” The machine quickly hid behind a collapsed building’s intact corner wall. She crouched low and poked her head out from her cover just enough that she could see the Rangers with one eye. “Heavily armoured and well-armed targets. Ill-prepared to engage. Best course of action… avoid.”

While Pixie watched as the heavens exploded with lightning and thunder before a torrential downpour began to soak the land. Normally the programming of the machine would not react to the rain, but something else did.

“Ugh, this will make a mess of my mane,” Pixie groaned, her eyes flashing back to blue as she used her magic to create a magic dome above her to protect her from the rain. Once that was done, her eyes flashed back to red and she fell back into her zombie-like state.

After she waited several minutes for the Rangers to move a good distance away, she left her cover and began to walk up the road in pursuit of her target.

XXXXX

The journey up the mountain road wasn’t that bad, and it didn’t take more than a couple of hours more. Once we were in the safety of the valley, with nothing but the slopes of the mountain and the road ahead and behind us, Dusty cast a shield spell to protect us from the storm and to repel the wild life of the mountain. As we made our way up, we found groups of large woolly-looking things that looked a lot like mutated sheep, which Dusty called Big Horners, and the only hostiles we encountered that the shield protected us from were Giant Mantises.

The road we followed was a little tricky to transverse at times with how some areas were covered in piles of dirt and rocks from land/rockslides. The road was also winding, it took us back and forth around tight bends as it worked its way up the valley, but it eventually straightened out into a long stretch. As we got higher and higher, the temperature dropped, and we also found ourselves walking past tall and healthy pine trees. I assumed that mountain acted as a shield and protected the trees from the effects of the bombs. We also found ourselves walking through snow, and the storm turned into a snow storm as we neared the summit. This change of environment didn’t sit well with Fruity.

“We are almost there,” Dusty announced.

“This is smegging freezing. Ugh, what is all this white stuff?” He asked as he shook his hooves to shake the built-up snow off his hooves.

I could see a wall made of tree trunks up ahead through the haze of the heavy snow. “You don’t know what snow is?” I asked in surprise.

“Snow?” He replied with a tilt of his head. I suppose that answered that.

“It’s frozen water. I’m surprised you don’t know about snow, considering you were born in the clouds.”

“Forgive me but this snow wasn’t something we needed, nor do we control the weather much anymore since the SPP does most of that for us these days,” He explained.

“I guess I can understand that,” I said with a nod as we began to pass through the gate between the tree trunk wall.

“Welcome back sister,” A green alicorn said that stood guard by the gate.

“Thank you, Nova,” Dusty said with a smile.

“Is she the one? The one she’s been waiting for?” A purple alicorn asked that also stood by the wall as a sentry. Dusty nodded in return. “She will be very happy to finally meet her. Welcome to the Alicorn Sanctuary.”

“Um, t-thank you,” I said with a hint of nervousness.

The old ski lodge quickly came into view once we were past the gate, and it was very well lit up with the lights on the outside and lights from the windows. The place looked very well intact, almost like it had been restored, even the tall radio mast looked in remarkably good condition. Dusty led us up the steps to the front door and opened the door for us to get us out of the storm.

“Oh sweet, sweet warmth,” Fruity sighed in relief once we were all inside and the door had closed behind us.

“Ah, finally. Welcome to the Alicorn Sanctuary, Crystal. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you,” A beige unicorn with a purple mane tied up into a bun said with a smile. The unicorn didn’t look any older than me, and she wore an old and worn lab coat with a faded MoA logo on the breast pocket. “Dusty, if you please,” She said with a sudden serious look on her face.

“Of course, Doctor,” The alicorn said, and before we knew what was going on, she zapped Nexus with a bolt of magic that made him enter an emergency shutdown state.

“WHAT THE BLOODY HELL!?” Fruity yelled in shock. Even I recoiled in surprise, but I was so taken off guard by it I was silent.

“I do apologise, but this is a necessary precaution,” The mare said as she approached our downed friend. Fruity tensed at this as she brushed our machine companion’s forehead with her hoof. “Good, his forehead port is intact.” She then reached up to her horn and grasped it with her fetlock, and to our horror, twisted it and pulled her horn off her forehead.

“What the f…” Fruity and I both began to yell, but also stopped at the same time too when we saw the huge metal pins that were on the underside of the horn. We were shocked into silence as she then plugged her horn into Nexus’s forehead and twisted into place.

“Run backdoor surveillance sweep,” She said to Nexus.

“Accessing all subroutines and processes… accessing restricted subroutines and processes…” Nexus said in a monotone voice, as if he was just the machine without his personality. “Scan complete. No outbound signal detected from any subroutine or process. No connection to Production Facility detected.”

The mare sighed deeply in relief as she retrieved her horn and allowed Nexus to wake back up. He was understandably not happy about the sudden forced shutdown.

“Please don’t do that again,” He asked almost fearfully.

“I do apologise for my actions I-02… No, Nexus,” She then turned to regard us all. “But please understand. This is a safe place for alicorns and if he knew I was still alive and here, he wouldn’t waste a minute in sending everything he could spare in trying to get to me.”

“What?” I asked in confusion.

She smiled and turned towards a hallway to the right of the main door. “Please, follow me to my lab and I’ll explain everything, and I can finally give you all the answers you need about your current condition, Crystal.”

I nodded as I began to follow the mare, eager to know why this was done to me. Dusty bid us farewell as we followed the Doctor through a couple of hallways until she opened the door to a lodge hotel room that had been made into a lab of sorts. There were terminals, chemistry sets, recording devices, shelves with chemicals, and other science gear on it; and in the middle of the room was a large bed with an overhead light.

“Now, allow me to introduce myself,” The mare began with a smile once we were all inside and sat on our rumps. “My name is Dr Pear. I am the one that built you, Crystal.”

“Whoa, hold up. What kind of bullshit is that? That’s impossible!” Fruity accused.

“Fruity!” I hissed, a little annoyed at his rudeness and profanity in front of Xian again.

“I’m sorry about my coltfriend, but I must agree with him there. There is no way you could be the pony that made me,” I said while I looked the mare over. I tilted my head while I stared. Something about her did seem vaguely familiar for some reason.

“I assure you, I am,” She said. “I suppose I should start with that.” She then looked at Nexus. “To put it simply, I made myself into one of him,” She said while she pointed a hoof at Nexus. “A Mark 2.”

Our eyes widened in disbelief at what we just heard, and Fruity asked the question that immediately came to mind.

“Why the bloody hell would you do that to yourself?”

At that moment, a little unicorn filly burst into the room and excitedly bounced over to Dr Pear. “Is she here Grandma, is she here?” She squealed.

The Doctor smiled lovingly as she patted the filly on the head. “She is Peach Bottom.” She smiled as she directed the filly to look towards us. I smiled nervously as the filly beamed. I felt Xian shift to hide between my forelegs and shook with nervous fear.

Shh, nolite ergo solliciti esse, et non nocuerunt tibi mel,” I whispered to Xian. Thankfully, she calmed down but didn’t leave the safety of my forelegs.

“I see the translation program is working fine,” Dr Pear said absentmindedly.

“Celestia give me strength, there you are madam,” Another unicorn mare said as she entered the lab. “I swear, I turn my back for one moment and you disappear. That’s it young lady, you are grounded for a week.” The young unicorn filly let out a whine and hung her head.

The mare looked to Dr Pear, who looked a little younger than the unicorn mare. “I’m so sorry Grandmother. I hope she didn’t disturb you again.”

“Grandmother!?” Fruity and I blurted out.

“Huh? Oh, I do apologise, you have guests. I better get nosey to bed. Again, I’m sorry,” The mare apologised as she picked up the filly in her magic. The young filly harrumphed and folded her forelegs in annoyance.

“Don’t worry about it Chestnut, she is welcome to stay,” Dr Pear said softly, but Chestnut shook her head.

“I’m sorry, but this little one needs to learn to keep her nose out of other ponies’ business.” She began to leave the room while levitating her daughter. “Sorry for the disruption,” She said to us before she left.

Dr Pear shook her head softly. “To answer your question Mr Fruity,” Dr Pear began with a pained sigh. “I turned myself into a robot because it was the only option I had left in order to protect and save my family. It was also the only way I could trap him and escape the facility, and give me the ability to protect my foal.” Her eyes glistened with tears as memories of a horrible time played through her mind. She then fixed Fruity with a serious look. “So, let me ask you a serious question, Mr Fruity. What would you be willing to sacrifice for your family if it meant they could survive?”

“I…” Fruity stopped and blinked before he looked to me and Xian, who nervously peeked out from behind my forelegs. He sat down beside me and wrapped a wing around me, holding me close to him. “I would be willing to sacrifice anything for them,” He said with conviction. I felt my heart melt at those words, to know how much he cared about me, about us, that much. I smiled as I leaned up and kissed his cheek, which caused his wings to poof erect on his back.

Dr Pear held a fore hoof to her lips to stifle a giggle for a moment, before she coughed and became serious again.

“Now then, Crystal. I would believe you would like to know what became of you?” She asked.

I nodded. “Yes. Why was this done to me? Why was my life stolen? Why wasn’t I allowed to die?”

She nodded as she sat down. “I was just a young cybernetic surgeon back then, but Starlight Glimmer with her Magi-Tech company, Starlight Industries, funding Paradigm Cybernetics was helping improve and advance my company quickly. We were working hard to help ponies who suffered horrible crippling injuries, but the war helped secure our place in the industry.

I was approached by Colonel Ironside six years before the bombs fell. He was also the head of the Ministry of Awesome’s Espionage Department. He had a proposal for me, and that was to create the ultimate spy. With my work in cybernetics, which also included neural synthetic linking, he said I was perfect for the job. He described the spy to be a robot with a brain and coated in skin. When I thought about it back then, I thought it would be a perfect opportunity and learning experience, so I accepted.

He told me his project, Project Infiltrator, was approved by Princess Luna. All projects like this had to be approved by the Princess before they could get the go-ahead. The order was for five Infiltrators, all of them were to have brains, hearts, and flesh. However, we were gonna need to make sure the first would work since such a thing had never been done before, but Ironside told me he had a volunteer already lined up.”

I gasped when the story got to me.

“Yes, that so-called volunteer was you. I was with him when he visited the hospital where you were being treated in Las Pegasus. He told me you had signed the contract willingly. But, I know better now.

It didn’t take long for your body to arrive at Paradigm Cybernetics. Please understand, I was under the impression this was all legal and you had volunteered for it. I extracted your brain with the utmost care and transplanted it into the skull of the endoskeleton you now inhabit. I used all my skills as a cybernetic surgeon to re-establish neural links and synthetically sync them with the electronic brain and optical sensors your brain is tied directly into now.

I decided that the Infiltrators would need lungs, so they could better blend in with their target groups. Thankfully, Ironside gave me access to some other secretive project’s data called Project Chimera, where I could grow cloned organs or body parts from a sample of DNA. We were able to grow you a healthy heart and lungs. But, it was shortly after securing and sealing your chest, so your organs would be protected, that I got an unannounced visit from Colonel Ironside.

He wasn’t happy. He wanted to know what was taking me so long to finish you. I didn’t understand why he was so impatient. I was sure he understood building something so complex, and not to mention advanced, would take time and I told him as much, and that’s when he told me. He told me the project was off the radar, that it wasn’t approved by the Princess. He had lied to me, made me work on it while he made me think everything was legal and good. I threatened to go to the authorities after that, but he had something on me too. I could have been done for murder since I had extracted your brain and had your original organic body incinerated. Even though you are alive cybernetically, I technically killed you as far as the authorities would have been concerned back then.

I decided then and there I would do everything in my power to make you as much of a living being as possible, despite how much of you would be mechanical. I had to do many neural recalibrations, gave you a synthetic stomach with a magical enchantment that would break down anything you ate into energy, gave you a functional uterus, removed the lateral control rods to free up abdominal space, but reinforced your spine with smaller control rods so you could still bend and move your spine.

I spent five years fine tuning you. I delayed building the others since I knew it was illegal then, and made excuses for why you were taking so long. But, things began to get weird after the fourth year. Ironside stopped demanding for your completion, instead beginning to ask about my Flesh Binding spell. This spell is why our endoskeletons have a flesh cover on it that hasn’t come off. The spell makes the flesh stick to the endoskeleton like it would as if it was a normal skeleton. Ironside would call or visit me, asking and demanding to know the spell formula. I found it odd that he would want to know the spell since he was an Earth Pony, but the spell was my own creation and I didn’t want to give it up, and it was also the only thing I had left that would stop him from tossing me aside and having me arrested for illegal activity. Being in espionage meant he could easily pin everything on me.

You were pretty much complete, minus a few implants, when I was told we needed to evacuate the facility. As the war dragged on, the Ministry Mare Pinkie Pie got a little unstable and began to raid places she thought were suspect. Ironside told me because of Paradigm Cybernetics affiliation with Starlight Industries, it was one of those suspected places. He told me he had a whole new dedicated facility built in secret in the Marejave desert, and I quickly had you prepped and ready for transport in a Stasis Pod. As not to raise too much suspicion, you were placed in Manehattan General until it was time to have you moved. However, you know what happened next.”

I nodded as I shivered as the horrible memories of waking up in that destroyed hospital with nopony around, and then finding all the death and destruction when I walked out of the front door. “Yeah, the wasteland.”.

Dr Pair sighed and looked to the southeast, even though her gaze was centred on a wall. It was like she was looking right through the wall and in the direction of something she knew well.

“The call went out for everypony to evacuate before you could be transported to the facility. That was actually a good thing, because it would have given him exactly what he wanted. Unfortunately, when we were to head to our assigned Stables, he knocked me out with chloroform. When I came to, I found myself inside the Marejave Production Facility under Meadowlark Hill. By then, the bombs had already fallen and filled the air with lethal fallout, and the facility’s entrance was sealed for safety reasons. He explained that we were going to live our lives in there until we died, and I was to give him my Flesh Binding spell one way or another.”

Dr Pear shuddered upon the recollection being in the facility.

“He revealed to me what he had been up to. What he wanted my spell for, and what the true purpose of Project Infiltrator was. He led me through a large red blast door into what he called the Mark 2 Vault, and inside was a literal army of Infiltrators. There were one thousand Mark 2 units inside that vault, all waiting to be given a flesh coating.”

“ONE THOUSAND!” Fruity shrieked in alarm. I was a second away from screaming that myself. A thousand! We were lucky we only had three of them chase us. If he sent them all after us, we’d be helpless and pretty much anything that got in their way wouldn’t have stood a chance.

“Yes. For the purpose of Project Infiltrator wasn’t to infiltrator just the enemy, but to infiltrate our own country. These machines were to assume the likeness of ponies in the government, in positions of power, influence, powerful companies, anything that would impact the way Equestria was run. He would have used his machines to control the very way Equestria was governed from the shadows. The worst part came when he showed me his ultimate creation with the Mark 2 line. Unit-1000. He told me that that one was to replace Princess Celestia herself and retake her position on the throne. It would also act as a relay for Colonel Ironside to be able to keep in touch with all the other Mark 2 units spread across Equestria, as well as him being able to send Unit-1000 commands to which it could then transmit to the corresponding Mark 2s. If things went the way he wanted, he could have effectively controlled Equestria, and from what he told me, he intended to lead Equestria away from war. If you would believe that.”

“That’s some supervillain-level shit right there,” Fruity commented before Dr Pear continued with her story.

“Since we didn’t have you Crystal, I was the only source for the spell. After he told me the purpose of Project Infiltrator, I was more than determined not to give it to him. He was more relaxed this time around since were locked inside the facility together. I suppose he guessed that only time would weaken my resolve. He was wrong, however. I managed to stay quiet for thirty long years, and in that time, I noticed how he got more and more desperate as we aged. Well, despite my age of sixty-three, I still entered an oestrus cycle. I was usually careful and locked myself in my room to be away from him, but this time around he managed to trap me before I could. I had no intention or desire to want to mate with him. I fought the need to breed with everything I had but…” She stopped as she bit her lip. She also began to take simulated deep breaths as if to try and calm herself down, despite not needing air as a Mark 2 herself. After a minute of regaining her nerve, she continued. “He…he…he forced himself on me… He raped me.” She sighed and shook her head. “Even after a hundred and fifty years, it still never gets any easier to talk about that part.”

Fruity and I gasped, horrified and disgusted to know such a thing had been done to her.

“He thankfully let me go once the deed was done, and I hastily got away and locked myself in my room. I stayed in there for months, only going out to get food before going back to hide from him. However, as the weeks and months passed, I began to notice the bodily changes, and that was when I realised I was pregnant. The dirty son of a bitch had planned for it. Being in the facility with not much do gave you a lot of time to think, and when I found out I was pregnant, one of the first things I did was think of why this happened now after so many years. It was because he planned it, because he wanted to use my foal as leverage to get what he desired most.”

It was now that realisation dawned on us to why she turned herself into a machine.

“Yes. You can see it now, can’t you?” She asked before she continued. “I knew I couldn’t let my foal be used as some form of bargaining chip, so I plotted my escape. I went through many ideas, all of them stupid and would have led to my death. But there was only one option and it came with a chance to also seal him away in the computer if it worked. There was plenty of spare pieces left from the automated production lines that built the Mark 2’s, so I had two more built: Unit-1001 and Unit-1002. I am Unit-1001, and Nexus is Unit-1002. I went first with the mind transfer to prove to him it was safe and would work. This was of course after I had had my foal. When it came time for him, as soon as the process was started, and he was on his way through the system, I flicked a switch and it changed the directory to where he was gonna go. Instead of going into Nexus’s head, he instead went into an empty partition in the main computer’s hard drive. I had a few minutes then to gather a few things and my daughter, and escape the facility before he began to assume control of the facility. I escaped the facility while also damaging certain cables along the way, so he wouldn’t be able to control all the facility, as he would have wanted now that he was in the system. I also made sure to cut his connection to the Mark 2 Vault, so he wouldn’t be able to remotely activate any of his machines.”

She looked over to Nexus and sighed.

“But I suppose I should have expected his vessel to respond to his commands when he detected the presence of you, Crystal, in the Marejave. Thus, he realised he still had a chance at getting what he wanted.”

I gasped in shock at the realisation that it was because of me that this whole ‘robot hunting me down’ business was because of me. Just from setting hoof in the Marejave.

“So, this brings us to where we are now. He is down two machines, and one is not responding to his or Unit-1000’s commands. There is another out in the Marejave: Unit-3. It was waiting for you at the train station. It has likely been sent to look for you now as Ironside has surely noticed you have left the train before it arrived.”

I gently hugged Xian to my barrel as I felt devastated to know that my life was robbed from me, just to be reborn as this artificial being, and to know I didn’t matter to the one who first wanted me created.

“Do I really mean so little? Just something to be cast aside and forgotten once he gets the spell?” I asked on the verge of tears.

“Oh goodness, no,” Dr Pear said softly as she lifted my chin with a hoof and stared into my eyes, organic and robotic. “You were just a means to an end to that bastard, but to me, you were a life I could save. I knew about all your health issues because I made it my business to know about the mare I had ripped the brain out of. I wanted to help you by making sure that when the war was over, you could return to a life that was free of all your health-related problems. I put everything I had into making sure everything worked correctly. But it would seem something isn’t working. Your eye should have regenerated by now,” She said as she gently held my face with her hooves and leaned in close to examine my wound.

“Thank you. I’m happy to know I meant something to somepony. Um, did my mother know about this?” I asked while she eyed my still-exposed robotic eye.

“Funny you should ask that. Apparently, your mother is how Ironside got you as his volunteer,” She said as she sat back and rubbed her hoof to her chin while she stared at my chest.

“WHAT!?” I shrieked.

“Ow my ear,” Fruity whined as my high pitched shriek was pretty much down his ear.

“I found a surveillance holotape while rummaging around in the Production Facility one day, and when I played it I saw Ironside with a light pink crystal pony with a light-yellow mane and tail. She wore a MoA jacket with an admin’s badge, so she worked at the offices that Ironside frequented. She knew of the project and knew we needed volunteers.” I couldn’t believe it. My own mother offered me up to be used in some unethical project that has turned me into a robot. Dr Pear seemed to have guessed what I was thinking from the way I deflated in front of her. “Hey, I know how that sounded but believe me, she wanted to save you. You were her daughter, after all. She understood the Infiltrator would use your brain and she asked that we do it to save you. Sadly, I was not made aware of this meeting or request from your mother. All Ironside ever told me was that he had a volunteer.” She sighed. Dr Pear placed her hoof on my chest and pressed hard. “No wonder you eye hasn’t regenerated. I don’t feel any power coming from your regeneration talisman and it feels out of place. Have you dislocated it at some point?”

Tears were beading in the corner of my intact eye. My mum wanted to save me. She must have been so desperate to save my life that she would turn to such extreme methods. Oh, how I wished I could see her again. I shook my head to get my thoughts back on track and looked back to Dr Pear.

“Um, yeah. A little while ago I got stabbed in the chest, and I felt the blade dislodge the talisman, but I pushed it back in,” I answered.

“Hmm. You may not have successfully secured it so it has over time fully come out of its cradle. I’m afraid I’m going to need to cut open your chest, so I can examine your regen system,” She said softly.

“Um, ok, err, Fruity? Would you please take Xian someplace she can get some sleep please? I don’t want her to be around when I’m getting cut open,” I asked him.

“Sure,” He said with a smile as he gently coaxed the filly out from between my legs. “Uh, you wouldn’t happen to have a spare room, would you?” He asked Dr Pair.

She smiled warmly and nodded. “Umagon, would you please show our guests to a free room please?” She called.

A tall green alicorn walked into the room and bowed her head. “Of course, Doctor,” She said with a warm smile and turned to Fruity, who now had Xian curled up on his back. “Please, follow me.” She then turned around and began to walk out of the room.

“I’ll join you once I’ve been fixed,” I said and kissed him on the cheek.

He returned the kiss before he turned and followed the alicorn.

XXXXX

I pushed open the door of our guest room and smiled at the sight of Xian sound asleep in one of the beds. Fruity was sitting in a chair next to the window as he looked out into the snow storm. He looked up as he noticed me.

“How’d it go?” He asked as he got up and approached me.

“It stung, but she reset the talisman properly and it is doing its job again,” I replied with a sigh.

“Are you ok?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know how to feel about this. My mum offered me to him in the hopes it’ll save my life. He wanted me for his little project, but in the end, I ended up being nothing to him; but Dr Pear, she actually wanted to help me. She wanted to do what my mother had hoped would happen, but had been kept in the dark the whole time. I don’t know how to feel. I’m so conflicted,” I grumbled.

Fruity hugged me tightly, one of his hooves gently stroked my mane. “As bad as it may seem, your life has been saved in some shape or form and you are alive. I’m glad because I got to meet you when I did, and I can be with you now.”

“Oh Fruity,” I kissed him as my heart swelled for the caring stallion.

“Oh, sorry to interrupt, but Dr Pear would like to see you two,” The green alicorn, Umagon, said as she appeared in the doorway to our guest room.

“Isn’t it a bit late?” Fruity complained.

“She said it is very important,” Umagon reasoned.

“Alright, we’ll be there,” I told her.

Fruity sighed and yawned, but he threw his wing over my back and we began to follow the alicorn, before I stopped and looked back to Xian.

“What about Xian?”

“Let her sleep. She’s had a long day,” Fruity said softly.

I nodded as we left the room, but I made sure to close and lock the door before we continued to follow Umagon.

XXXXX

As the door to the lodge hotel room closed, there was a flash of lightning through the window, and the head of a pony with glowing red eyes was there, peering through the window at the sleeping form of the zebra filly.

Chapter 18: No Choice

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Fallout Equestria: Influx

Chapter 18: No Choice


Fruity and I stepped back into Dr Pear’s lab shortly after Umagon had returned. I felt uneasy about leaving Xian alone while she slept for the first time since we took her in, but we were in a peaceful community, so I could at least trust them not to disturb her or enter our room unannounced. However, no matter how much I tried to reason leaving her alone while she was asleep in her bed, I couldn’t shake the pit of worry in my stomach.

“Thank you both for coming back so soon,” Dr Pear greeted with a small smile. “I know you wanted to get some rest, but this is rather important.”

“Yeah, what’s this about?” I asked, a little grumpily.

“First, let me ask you a simple question,” She began. “What do you intend to do, now that you know the truth behind your mechanical origins?”

I opened my mouth to respond but stopped and closed it. I was not expecting that question at all and it caught me off guard.

“And that is important because?” Fruity queried.

“Because your future could be painful,” The doctor replied flatly.

“I, um… honestly, I want to get as far away from here as possible. Away from all this shit. I got a daughter to think about now and I want her to grow up in as peaceful a place as possible,” I finally answered with conviction.

She just shook her head with a frown.

“What?” Fruity asked with annoyance as he flared his wings.

“You will never have a peaceful life, not while HE is alive and is able to send machine after machine after you. He knows you are alive, he wants you so he can finish what he started, and he will stop at nothing to get what he wants,” Dr Pear said, her voice dripping with venom for the Colonel. “If you want to go gallivanting all over the wasteland, looking for a place to settle down, you’ll be spending the rest of your life looking over your shoulder for when the next robot will turn up to try and take a pop at you. Also remember that he has over nine hundred still in his vault.”

I blinked and felt a little intimidated by her response. There was such resentment in her voice. It also hurt that even now I couldn’t just leave with Fruity, Xian, and Nexus to begin a new life. We’d end up spending it living in constant fear and suspicion of those around us.

Fruity sighed. “Then what do you suggest we do then?”

“Simple. You destroy the Production Facility and everything in it.” Dr Pear spoke like it was the most obvious thing.

“You fucking what?” He gasped in surprise from the absurdity of her suggestion.

“Obviously you can’t attack the facility as you are. Your current weapons are not very effective against the machines, but I do know where you can find one that will be very effective indeed,” She said as she approached her terminal.

“I’m sorry but you gotta be absolutely of your nut to think we’ll willingly go to the Facility now that we know it’s full of robots that’ll likely kill us!” I said in outrage.

“Yeah, I’m with her on this. Sod that! Fuck going to a death trap with nearly a thousand robots. You can fuck that right off.” Fruity agreed.

“Even if we’d have to spend the rest of our lives looking over our shoulder as you said, it’s better than walking into certain death.”

“You must understand, he will stop at nothing to…” Dr Pear tried to reason before I cut her off.

“I don’t care! We are not going to throw ourselves to the timberwolves like this for you, or for anypony. We are done here. First thing in the morning we are going to get as far away from here as possible!” I declared with a stomp of my hoof. I must have bypassed the strength regulator because I left a spiderweb of cracks on the tile floor where my hoof hit.

“Too right. Bollocks to all this crap,” Fruity agreed as we both turned and left the lab, making our way back towards our room.

“Who does she think she is, asking us to go to the Production Facility and destroy it? It’s like Princess Luna going up to Lord Tirek and saying, ‘Here I am, take my magic’,” I grumbled in a hideous impression of Princess Luna’s voice.

“Yeah, that is kinda messed up,” Fruity nodded along.

After a short walk back to our lodge room we came to the door. I raised my hoof to open it, but then stopped as something didn’t feel right. I could feel a cold draft blowing out from under it.

“Do you feel that?” I asked with rising concern.

“Yeah,” Fruity nodded, his wings flared.

The nervousness in my stomach increased to the point it felt like a lead weight was in my belly. I quickly grabbed the door knob and threw the door open, almost ripping it off its hinges at the same time. The room was quiet save for the sound of the howling wind from outside and the flapping of curtains. My attention was immediately drawn to the bed where I had left Xian. It was vacant. I flared my wings and immediately shot to the open window, bowling over Fruity as I shot passed him, and stuck my head out into the cold night air. I could barely see anything through the thick snowfall, but as I looked around I couldn’t see any signs that anypony had been here apart from a large indentation in the snow below the windowsill outside.

“XIAN!” I screamed in anguish as the realisation that my daughter was now missing hit home.

“How could this happen? Who would just take her and from outside to boot?” Fruity asked with an angry and confused scowl.

“Somepony with magic… Dr Pear… She knows something,” I growled as my sorrow turned to anger I then got up from the window and turned around. With a burst of speed from my wings, I shot out the door, down the hall, and burst through the Dr’s Lab door in a teal and orange blur.

“Ahh!” Umagon squealed in fright and whirled around to face me as I broke down the door.

“Crystal, what is the meaning of this?” Dr Pear asked in confusion.

“MY DAUGHTER IS MISSING!” I yelled in anger. “DID YOU KNOW THIS WAS GOING TO HAPPEN?!” I demanded as I advanced on her.

The robotic mare let out a defeated sigh as she looked up at Umagon. “So it’s true then? It was here?”

“It was here… WHAT WAS HERE?” I almost screamed. Fruity flew in through the broken door and enveloped me in a comforting embrace.

“Shh, calm down Crystal. You need to calm down,” He said soothingly.

Dr Pear sighed regrettably. “Before you arrived I had been tracking the whereabouts of Unit-3. When you entered the Marejave on the train it was waiting for you at the station, but when I contacted you to get you to come here, it began to make its way west.”

“You mean it was following us here?” Fruity asked.

“Yes, but I had long since taught the alicorns here what the Mana-Core’s energy signature that a Mark 2 uses felt like, since I am one myself, so they would have been able to sense it if one of Ironside’s machines ever came for here me. Therefore, I believed they would have been able to sense Unit-3 as it followed you up the mountain,” Dr Pear looked down and sighed. “Umagon had just informed me that a unicorn called Pixie Lulamoon had been let into the Sanctuary and same unicorn teleported away with something wrapped up in bedsheets.”

“If you taught the alicorns to sense for Mana-Cores, how the fuck did Unit-3 slip passed your sentries?” I demanded with an angry stomp of my hoof, cracking the tile floor again.

“I believe Unit-3 had been upgraded to a Unicorn model from what I’ve been told. This would give the machine access to unicorn magic so that it could use spells and give said spells an extra boost by using its own Mana-Core energy, as it is condensed magical energy.” Dr Pear sighed with a shake of her head. “I don’t know for sure how this machine evaded detection. The only thing I can theorise is that is was able to supress its Mana-Core signature.” She stopped, her eyes widening as she just realised something. “Of course. That is exactly what it did.”

“What do you mean?” Fruity asked.

“I mean, Mr Fruity, that it is very easy for the machine to have supressed its Mana-Core signature because the energy output is far larger than necessary for the machine in question. I know I don’t need to run my core at one hundred percent, so I’ve reduced its output to twenty percent. A Mark 2 can operate without doing anything too strenuous for its systems on five percent. So I believe it reduced its output to the bare minimum it could operate before it got here and played the part of the pony it was impersonating. When it came to scanning it for the energy signature, the unicorn magic it possessed masked the reduced Mana-Core, making the sentries at the gate believe Unit-3 was a normal unicorn,” Dr Pear explained quickly.

“So where is my daughter now, now that it teleported away with her?” I demanded.

“Hmmm. That was a strong teleportation, likely fuelled by its Mana-Core for very long distance,” Dr Pear sighed sadly. “I believe she is at the Production Facility right now.”

I immediately turned around and began to make my way for the door before Fruity bit my tail and stopped me.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Dr Pear asked.

“To save my daughter,” I answered as I tugged on my tail free.

“That is exactly what he wants. He is using her as bait to lure YOU to him,” She said with a raised voice.

“What a tosser,” Fruity grumbled.

“Why do you think I escaped him all those years ago? I knew he would try to use my daughter against me to get what he wanted, now he’s doing the exact same thing I knew he would do with you,” She growled.

“I can’t just sit here and do nothing!” I yelled.

“I know, but you can’t just charge head long in there because you will be giving him exactly what he wants, and you both will die for it.”

“What do you propose we do?” Fruity asked.

“Like I said earlier, you need to be prepared and I know of a weapon that will give you the edge you need.”

“Alright, and where is this weapon?” Fruity queried.

“In the forward cargo hold of the wreck of RMS Luna, or what is now known as Rust-Bucket City.”

“There is not a fucking hell’s chance I’m going all the way to the coast to get a special gun when my daughter is in danger,” I growled angrily.

“You won’t have to. Two green alicorns working together can use their magic to create a teleportation tunnel, or what we’ve dubbed a Phase Gate, which will let you jump instantaneously from here to there and back again. Also, to save you time,” She opened a drawer with her magic and pulled out a green keycard with the M.o.A insignia on it, along with a laminated card that had a numerical code printed on it. “These are the security cards for the weapon case in the ship’s hold.”

“So basically, we can be there and back in moments?” Fruity asked.

“Basically.”

“My foal has been foalnapped! I can’t just go gallivanting off on a fucking scavengers hunt!” I growled.

“Whoa, easy there Crystal. Calm it down a notch,” Fruity said soothingly while he rested his wing on my back.

“Yes, please try to remain calm. Your eyes just flashed orange. Extreme emotions are not a strong suit for Infiltrators like yourself,” Dr Pear added.

“O-orange?” I stuttered, surprised to hear my eyes had just flashed between colours.

At that moment Nexus entered the room, his body and armour having remnants of snow stuck in places.

“Where in the name of buggery have you been?” Fruity exclaimed in frustration for our formerly absent machine companion.

“Outside, sir. I had detected a familiar, albeit weak, energy signature and began tracking it,” He replied before he hung his head. “I’ve heard from other alicorns what has happened, and the energy I was tracking stopped at where that unicorn teleported out from.”

Dr Pear turned to her other creation. “Can you confirm that what you tracked was Unit-3?”

“Affirmative. Distinct energy pattern was weak, but present. Signature was identical to Units 1 and 2.”

“Then it is as I feared. Your foal is now likely in the hooves of Colonel Ironside, who will likely use her as bait for you.”

I began to breathe very heavily as a whirlwind of emotions battled for control inside my head. Fear, anger, anguish, panic; they all wanted to jump to the top. Fruity held me tightly, gently rocking me side to side while whispering sweet nothings in an attempt to keep me calm.

“Give me a few minutes while I find Tratos and her sister, then we can go into detail on what you need to do once at the ship.”

Fruity looked up at the robotic doctor. “Is it absolutely necessary that we get this gun?”

“Yes, because if you don’t, your chances of making out of the Production Facility alive will be zero,” She stated coldly, leaving no room for argument. She then left the room in search for the alicorns she mentioned.

“I can’t believe we can’t just go save her,” I whimpered.

“I know, I know. I want to go save her too but we gotta listen to her. She knows what we are to expect when we go there,” Fruity reasoned.

“She must be so scared,” I sobbed.

“I know but imagine how scared and heartbroken she would be if we went to save her, only to get captured or worse because we didn’t have the weapon we needed to defend ourselves,” Fruity said.

I looked up with tears in my eyes. I didn’t want to admit it, but he was right. Dr Pear was right. It pained me to agree that we needed to go and get this weapon, but if I got captured or worse, then little Xian was as good as dead. I didn’t want to leave her in the clutches of my enemy any longer than I had to, but at that moment I had no choice.

XXXXX

With a crack and a bright blue flash, Unit-3 disguised as Pixie Lulamoon materialised in the centre of the control room of the Production Facility, carrying a bundle wrapped up in a bed sheet in one foreleg. Once the mare regained her senses, she staggered and almost toppled over, as if she was exhausted. The illusion that covered her robotic body flickered periodically, and her posture mirrored her state as she slumped and her rear legs practically gave out on her.

“Warning, Secondary Powercell: Depleted!”
“Warning, Primary Powercell: Critical!”
“Warning, Magic Reserves: Critical!”

Pixie whimpered tiredly as she fought to remain standing with so little energy left in her system. She also let out a sigh of relief when the presence in the back of her consciousness left, giving her back full control of herself.

“Welcome back Unit-3. What do you have to report?” A deep voice asked from in front of her.

The mare eeped and almost collapsed from the fright, but righted herself when she remembered where she was and who addressed her. She gulped down her nervousness and presented the whimpering bundle once she pulled the sheets away enough to reveal a face. The face revealed was of a young filly zebra that the wireframe pony had become aware of traveling with I-01.

“I, um, present to you, um… b-bait for…Cry-err, I-01 s-sir,” She said lamely.

A sadistic grin grew on the wireframe pony’s face which made both the filly and Pixie shiver in discomfort.

“Excellent. Take her down to the living quarters and watch her Unit-3,” He ordered before his eyes shifted to something out of Pixie’s line of sight. “Unit-1000, time to prepare.”

The much larger machine stomped forward, its heavy metal hooves causing loud metallic clangs as they hit the concrete floor. Pixie, despite her low-powered state, jumped back in fright as she wasn’t aware of just how close the giant robot was to her. Unit-1000 stopped in its advance to the main console and turned its neck so it could look down upon the smaller machine as it shivered in its presence.

“You have been given an order Unit-03. Carry it out," Unit-1000 demanded before it resumed its walk to the console.

“Y-yes ma’am, r-right away,” Pixie stuttered as she slowly stumbled out of the control room and into a side door. From there, she made way to an elevator that would go down to the living quarters. Once Pixie arrived she quickly made her way to Dr Pear’s old quarters, as it was better suited for holding an organic specimen, and placed the bundle on the old bed.

“Warning, warning, Primary Powercell: Power Level at 3%!”

“Ohh, I… I need to rest,” Pixie moaned before she partially collapsed against the bed.

The sheets moved and the young filly popped her head up out of the sheets. She looked around fearfully with tears in her eyes that threatened to spill at any moment. The poor filly clearly showed signs of fear as she looked around frantically, trying to back pedal away when she saw the one that foalnapped her.

“It’s ok. I won’t hurt you,” Pixie said softly, despite her voice now becoming more like an electronic processed female voice as her power dropped too low. “I… I’m so sorry. I-I didn’t want to do this. I really didn’t, I, um, didn’t have a choice,” She croaked out as her illusion also began to form tears to mirror her own mood. “Please forgive me.”

XXXXX

“We shouldn’t be waiting around here sitting on our rumps and doing fuck all!” The voice in my head grumbled.

“I know, I want to just fly out there, break down their door, and get her back,” I replied mentally while we waited for Dr Pear to return with the alicorns that could help us.

“Then let’s go! Celestia only knows what he could be doing to your kid.”

“Trust me, I can’t stop envisioning the torture he’d be putting her through, but Fruity and Dr Pear are right,” I replied and sighed deeply. “I can’t help her if I’m dead.”

“You are a cyberpony. You got freaky super strength and not to mention my awesome flying skills and speed,” The voice argued back, sounding a little smug at the end regarding my new pegasus traits.

“Just who are you anyway?” I asked, now that the voice had identified itself to be part of my pegasus side.

The voice chose this moment to stop talking to me, however, because the door to the lab opened and Dr Pear walked in, soon followed by two green alicorns that looked almost identical to each other.

“So sorry for the wait,” Dr Pear began as she gestured to the two alicorns. “This is Tratos and her twin sister Oxanna. They will create the Phase Gate to Rust-Bucket City for you.”

The two alicorns gave a small nod to each of us before the taller of the two stepped forward.

“My name is Tratos. My sister will teleport to a dune a few hundred feet away from the city and then we’ll create the bridge,” She informed us.

“Why not teleport directly to the ship?” Fruity enquired.

“It will cause a panic. We lost an alicorn the last time one of them did that,” Dr Pear explained with a sorrowful look on her face.

“Ah, sorry,” The pegasus meekly apologised.

“If you are ready we shall begin,” Tratos said as she gave her sister a nod, who then disappeared in a bright flash.

“Now what happens?” Fruity asked as we waited.

“A trait that all green alicorns seem to share with their twin is that they possess a sort of telepathy with each other,” Dr Pear explained. “So when Oxanna is ready, she will let her sister know via this link they share so they can begin the spell.”

We nodded in understanding while I anxiously shuffled my hooves, eager to get a move on because I didn’t want to waste any more time.

The green alicorn gave a nod and then turned to a section of the wall that was largely. She lowered her long horn to point at the wall before it began to glow in a bright purple light. I could feel the energy the alicorn exerted and it seemed to affect the air pressure in the room with its power. As the glow from her horn brightened, a circle of energy appeared in the centre of the wall and began to expand. It grew and grew until the top and bottom of the circle almost touched the floor and ceiling. The swirling vortex of energy then flashed, and like a clearing sky, the magic cleared from the centre all the way to the edge to leave a donut of swirling magical energy. What was left behind was what looked like a window, and through this window we could see Tratos’s sister as she raised her head now that the spell had been completed. All around her was nothing but sand, and she was being illuminated by the early morning sun.

“Wow,” Fruity breathed out in amazement.

“Yeah, now can we hurry this along,” I grumbled impatiently.

“The gateway is open and stable. You may go through,” Tratos confirmed.

“Great,” I said and began for the portal.

“Crystal,” Dr Pear called out as she stopped me.

“Ugh, what?”

“Her eyes again,” I heard Fruity mumble to himself worriedly.

“I know that getting Xian back is your top priority right now, and that you want to do it as soon as possible, but please, calm down. Extreme emotions and their effects on cybernetics in the Mark 1 Unit are something I never got to research or fully develop while building you as you were the first, so I do not know what will happen if your emotions reach a certain level. If the emotion rule still applies to the magic you received from after your upgrade, then it might cause some unexpected results,” Dr Pear warned me.

“I don’t care. My daughter is in danger and I need to save her no matter the cost,” I growled. “What would you do if you were me?”

She closed her mouth and looked down. “Be careful is all I ask,” She sighed quietly, and with that I turned back to the portal.

“C’mon Fruity, Nexus. Let’s get this over with,” I grumbled as I began for the magic window.

“Oh right. Ask for Captain Avery, tell her I sent you. It should help get you to the weapon much smoother,” Dr Pear called to us as we began to enter the portal.

I gave the doctor, my creator, a wing flap of acknowledgement as I stepped into the reflective surface of the magic portal. The first thing that I thought of was the Crystal Empire as the effects of the magic washed over me. I felt cold all over as I began to push through the barrier, like walking through the barrier that protected the Empire and kept the city warm, holding back the artic weather of the Frozen North. It also felt like I was pushing through flowing water despite still being dry, for I could feel something flowing over me as I moved through the portal. Just as suddenly as it began, I felt the heat of the morning sun as we stepped out onto the dry sand of the Marejave Desert. We were at the foot of a large dune that obscured our view of what was in front of us, but the sound of waves told us we were very close to the sea.

“Welcome Miss Éclair, Mr Fruity, and Nexus,” Oxanna greeted us softly. Fruity groaned at being referred to as “Mr Fruity” because of how Nexus had taken to calling him that. “Rust-Bucket City is just over this dune.”

“Thank you,” I said as I gave a curt nod, quickly beginning to scale the dune.

“I shall wait here for your return,” The alicorn said as she sat down on her haunches while at the same time cutting off her magic to sustain the portal. It closed shortly after Nexus pulled himself out.

My hooves dug into the soft sands as I trudged up the side of the hill. I feared I would slip and fall with how often the sands would shift and my hooves would sink deeper into the sandy hill. But eventually, after some cursing and struggling, I made it to the top and gasped. I could see a large lagoon with almost flat, calm water; and in the middle of this lagoon, with at least a hundred feet of itself on the beach, was the wreck of the RMS Luna.

I remembered the old news footage from before the war. The Luna and her sister ship, the RMS Celestia, had caused some controversy because they were going to be two of the largest iron-made passenger vessels ever made in Equestria. They were also steam-powered, meaning that they would require coal. Since the country was rationing its coal supplies, as well as having a shortage at the time, it didn’t make much sense. However, I remembered a spokespony of Gold Star Line (the company that owned the ships) that was interviewed, who said that alternative fuel sources had been looked into to be used to heat the boilers and remove the need for coal.

The ship was still fairly large. Though not as big as her sister, it easily eclipsed the old sailing ships of the time. The Luna had unfortunately not survived the test of time, for the rear quarter of the ship had collapsed. The stern was gone, and all the hull and superstructure around the second class portion was bending down into the water. There was a gap between the first class and second class superstructures which separated the two classes, and in between was the aft mast. Because the second class superstructure was bending down, the mast had also moved further back slightly. The only other obvious piece of damage to the ship I could see from up on the dune was that the third funnel had fallen over onto the deck. I assumed it had happened recently because it was still there, and if the ship was a functioning city, then the citizens could have ripped it apart by now.

Toward the bow I noticed something that surprised me. The ship had two deck guns mounted on either side of her forward deck, just in front of the superstructure below the bridge. I supposed it made sense to arm the ship as it would have been a big symbol of Equestria during the war. There also seemed to be some sort of lift mounted to the forward deck above the anchor, similar to the window cleaner cradles on tall buildings. It seemed that that would be our way onto the ship.

“Woah, that looks incredible,” Fruity whistled in amazement.

“Yeah, it does look amazing,” I agreed. “C’mon we gotta get to the bow of the ship.”

I spread my wings, ready to glide down to the beach where the ship rested, but Fruity stopped me.

“Hang on. Maybe we should walk,” He cautioned. “If they killed an alicorn in a panic when she teleported onto the ship, they might shoot you just for flying nearby unannounced.”

I grumbled, but he had a good point. However, walking down the dune and around the lagoon would add time onto our expedition here, time we did not have.

“It’s no fun when you can’t go at full speed,” The voice said in my head with a groan as we began to trudge down the sandy hill.

It took us at least twenty minutes of struggling with the shifting sands before we were able to reach the sturdier, compressed sand of the beach. I still found it interesting how water could make sand either hard and mouldable or soft and runny. Traveling along the beach was a heck of a lot easier than on the dry shifting sands of the dune. The closer we got, the bigger the ship became and the more details that became clear. The hull from the beach, all the way to where it began to bend down from where it collapsed, was lined with multiple layers of scavenged sheets of metal. The metal appeared to be from anything like flat sheets to old road signs or even billboards, and at several points along the hull, I could see large thick steel beams that were fixed to the side of the hull, stretching up to at least the boat-deck. It would seem the residents had attempted to prolong the ship’s lifespan by reinforcing the hull.

Another detail we made out was a makeshift shack built on the beach by the bow, with a large archway next to it that held the name of the city, made entirely from scrap metal. The shack looked to be a security station, as it was right next to where the cradle would land when it was lowered. With my cybernetically enhanced vision, I could see a pair of earth ponies in what looked like Stable-Tec security armour by the shack.

As we got closer, a light suddenly shown down on us from the ship, alerting the two guards, who ran forward until they stood just in front of the arch. I raised a wing to block out the light and looked up at the bow, noticing that a spotlight had been fixed to the hull so it could shine down upon approaching visitors. While shielding my eyes from the light with my wing, I noticed the guards rear their necks back like they saw something they didn’t like, and then one of them looked up to the ship and waved a foreleg in a signalling gesture I didn’t understand. What I did understand though, was that after he signalled for whatever it was, my threat warning flared to life.

“What’s going on?” I squeaked in alarm.

“Holy horseapples, those guns work!” Fruity shrieked as his wings flared out in surprise.

Sure enough, the deck gun on the port side had turned and its barrel was now aimed down at us. By the looks of things, it couldn’t go any lower but one wrong move and we would be blown to high heaven regardless.

“Six inch naval armament, single barrel. They certainly have a good defence system installed for their town,” Nexus commented quietly.

“Don’t move zebra,” One of the guards spat as they approached.

“You got a lot of nerve coming back here,” The other growled.

Fruity stepped forward. “Woah guys, why the hostility?” He asked as calmly as he could while the huge gun was aimed at us.

“This doesn’t concern you, pegasus,” The first guard said while he kept his gaze on me.

“Hey Bronze Wire, since when do zebras have wings or dress up like this?” The other guard asked.

“…Now that you mention it, I’ve never seen a zebra quite like this one before, and I don’t recall any of those lunatics we’ve had to deal with having any grey stripes either, Shelldon,” Bronze Wire replied.

I lowered my wing but pulled my stetson forward so the brim could shield my eyes from the light. “I’m no danger to your town. We just need to see Captain Avery on behalf of Dr Pear,” I told them as Dr Pear suggested.

The two guards blinked in surprise at the mention of their captain’s name. “You know the Captain?” Bronze asked.

“No, but Dr Pear does. She told us to ask for Captain Avery upon arrival,” I explained.

“You know the doctor?” Shelldon asked, just as surprised.

“That’s right, she’s been a big help to us recently,” Fruity replied with a nod.

“Alright then, if the Doctor sent you then you can go aboard. Captain Avery will be in the Bridge on the top deck,” Bronze said before he turned around and signalled up to the forward deck with his foreleg again. This time the spotlight went out, the naval gun returned to its neutral position, and the boarding cradle began to lower.

“Oh, word of warning miss Zebra,” Bronze said in a serious tone. “Try not to annoy anypony or go anyplace you shouldn’t. Ponies here don’t like zebras all that much on the account of all the attacks this Illustrious Moon Tribe has been throwing at us lately.”

“Illustrious Moon Tribe!” I gasped. We had only heard about them as we travelled throughout New Pegasus and the surrounding area. Nothing we had heard had painted them in a positive light, and with our recent experience of rescuing Xian from Bonbon Springs, it only reinforced their bad reputation because they abandoned her there. She was just a defenceless filly and they left her there to die alone.

“Why on Equis would they attack such a huge and heavily armed ship like this for?” Fruity asked in complete puzzlement.

The guards shook their heads. “We haven’t a clue,” Shelldon sighed.

Once the cradle hit the docking platform at the bottom, we climbed in, and when all three of us were in, one of the guards pressed a red button on a control panel outside the cradle, and it began to rise up toward the deck. On the way up, I became aware that the ship’s orginal name was still on the side of the bow. It was just below the deck and behind the anchor, but was hard to see as time had stripped the lettering of their once gold paint, leaving behind the raised letters. The name was speckled with some bits of gold that still hung on and marred with over a century of grime, but as we rose towards the deck we could make out the letters that spelled out, “L U N A”.

The cradled soon reached the top, and a platform folded out automatically from the cradle and down to the forward deck to let us off. As we began to board the ship, there was another pony in guard armour standing there waiting for us.

“Welcome aboard Rust-Bucket City. My name is Sandshark. I am the Guard Captain, but you can call me Sandy for short,” The stallion greeted us in a welcoming manner.

“Um, hi, and thank you,” I greeted as we stepped onto the ship, a little surprised by his friendly nature. “I know we just met but can you take us to Captain Avery. It’s important we see her as soon as possible.”

“Wow, we just met the guy and you’re asking him to take us to the Captain. Can’t we get to know him a little?” Fruity whispered quietly to me.

Sandy nodded. “Of course, please follow me.” He turned and began to walk down the deck towards the superstructure. He wasn’t at all curious that we wanted to see the captain immediately. I wonder if he already knew.

“We don’t have time to dawdle Fruity. Do I need to remind you that Xian’s life is at stake here?” I almost growled quietly.

The purple pegasus sighed and his wings drooped. “Of course I know, but we can’t keep on worrying our tails off about it. It’s no good for any of us, especially you!”

“Sir is right,” Nexus chimed in.

“Who asked you?” I snapped with my wings flaring out as we began to follow Sandy. I quickly realised what I did and looked back to Nexus. “I’m sorry.”

“Do not worry about it ma’am. I completely understand,” Nexus said softly.

“This is really getting to you, isn’t it?” Fruity asked as he draped a wing over my back and gave me a reassuring squeeze.

I whimpered. “I feel so helpless. I’m here on a fucking errand while my daughter is in the clutches of a mad pony, most likely scared and alone,” I sniffed. “I want her back so bad.”

Fruity gently nuzzled my cheek. “So do I Crys. We’ll save her, don’t you worry about that.”

There was a metallic clunk in front of us, and then a squeak as a door was opened.

“To get to the Bridge we’ll need to go to the Market Place and take the stairs up one deck. That will put us on the Boat-Deck and then it will be a simple walk to the Bridge from there,” Sandy explained as he held the door open for us.

We nodded as we all entered the ship and into a corridor lined with doors at regular intervals. The corridor was mostly white but the carpet had once been a ruby red. It was decorated with wall lights that were stylish and made from brass that would’ve bathed the corridor in plenty of light, if the light fixture had a working bulb. While we walked down the corridor, I noticed there was another that branched off at a T-junction that connected to the corridor on the opposite side, and that each door had a number on it. This area was likely a living area since these rooms were once the LUNA’s First Class staterooms.

Sandy pushed open a pair of double doors at the end of the corridor for us, and when we entered the room on the other side, my mouth dropped open.

“Welcome to the Market Place,” Sandy announced.

The Market Place, what was once the ship’s Grand Stair Case, was exactly what it was called. Vendors of all varying types had makeshift stalls or stores built in the large space the stair case provided on its multiple decks, and there was a lot of activity already despite the early hour. Ponies were milling around, talking or browsing wares and vendors setting up for the day. The ship truly was a living city.

Shortly after we entered, I got a sense of hostility when ponies began to notice us, and that sense grew exponentially when the conversations seemed to stop and everypony stopped what they were doing and stared at us, or rather at me. My wings flared instinctively out of nervousness and I felt uneasy with everypony looking at us.

“This way, please,” Sandy said as he led us by some vendors near the faded wooden railing to the back of the large room, where the large white marble steps of the grand stairs met the deck. The whole deck we were on was made of black and white marble tiles; I dreaded to think of the cost of all this back before the war. The stairs were wide at the bottom and gradually grew narrower towards the midway point until it reached a landing where the stairs continued going up on either side to reach the next deck. On the wall facing the stairs were the remains of a large painting, faded to near nothingness over the near two centuries. Above that was a wooden plaque to tell the citizens of this ship which deck they were on. Apparently, we were on A-Deck, which was one of the top decks.

“Who let that conniving slag on board?” I heard a stallion whisper as we passed. I guess Fruity heard it too as I felt him bristle beside me.

“Haven’t security learned we can’t trust a Stripe?” A mare grumbled.

As we turned to begin walking up the stairs, my wings gave an involuntary flap.

“Somepony needs to put that zebra out of her misery. She’s all mutated and shit,” Another stallion said loudly.

Fruity growled and whirled around in the direction that comment came from. “You fucking what mate?!” He growled defensively, his wings flared threateningly.

“Fruity, it’s not worth it,” I sighed.

“Sir, as much as I would commend coming to your mare’s defence, picking a fight here would be a very bad idea,” Nexus said as he stepped in front of Fruity and levelled him with his stoic robotic red eyes.

“These tossers need to learn some bloody respect,” He harrumphed before he turned and followed us up the stairs to the Boat-Deck level.

“I’m sorry about the residents but I did warn you,” Sandy said as he made for a door that was close to the stairs.

We exited the door on the ship’s port side and were immediately blinded by the bright morning sunlight. Fruity and I had to shield our eyes with our wings until our eyes adjusted, but once we could see again and lowered our wings, the sight was quite breath taking. The clear blue water of the lagoon, the bright clear blue sky, and the golden desert sands all around us; it looked like a paradise in the wastes, or a perfect pre-war holiday destination. Sadly, the moment was ruined when we turned to begin walking up the deck towards the front of the ship, for the sight of rust, grime, rot riddled life-boats, and loose or dangling rigging cables made this ship an eyesore in a beautiful picturesque location.

The Boat-Deck was the ship’s top most deck, but it also housed the ship’s first-class activity rooms, as well as the officer quarters and the ship’s wireless communication system. We walked down the deck between life-boats and the metal wall as we approached the front. A gaze up gave us a good sight of the ship’s enormous funnels that stood above us by at least five stories, and the first funnel was billowing smoke. Ahead we could follow a path that would take us around the superstructure. We could also climb some stairs to a structure that sat higher up and had small chest-high walled sections that branched off and extended until they hanged over the side of the ship by a couple of feet.

“The Bridge is up these stairs,” Sandy said as he began to climb them with us close behind.

Once we reached the top, Sandy knocked on the door to the Bridge. It took a few seconds before the door opened to reveal a rather thin and lanky unicorn stallion wearing a sailor’s hat.

“I have some visitors for the Captain,” Sandy told the unicorn.

“The Captain is busy and does not want to be disturbed,” The unicorn replied in a bored tone.

Sandy gave the unicorn a flat look and a deadpan reply. “They are here on behalf of Dr Pear.”

The unicorn blinked before opening the door and stepping out of the way.

As we entered the Bridge, I was surprised with how well lit it was, until I noticed that the entire front wall was made up of large square windows that overlooked the bow of the ship. There was a large ornate wooden steering wheel mounted to a telemotor, and several telegraphs on either side in front of the windows.

There were a few ponies on the bridge, some looking over reports while others seemed to be looking at diagrams of the ship, while a couple more seemed to be standing around trying to look important. A mare no older than me with pearly white fur and her sea green mane pulled back and tied into a neat ponytail approached me. She was wearing a tri-pointed hat with a large red feather stuck in it, and a well-worn black coat with long tails that had the Gold Star Line insignia stitched onto the left shoulder, and on her chest was the name of the ship.

“Good morning, I am Captain Avery. How can I help you?” She asked softly while her deep blue eyes flicked between all three of us.

I was momentarily stunned that this young mare was the captain. Everypony else in the bridge was almost twice her age.

“Aren’t you a bit young to be a captain?” Fruity blurted out. If it wasn’t for my current mood I would have likely reprimanded him on his lack of tact.

“Technically I’m not, as this isn’t a sea worthy ship but more of a town, so I’m more of a mayor since our settlement is made out of the ship” She explained tiredly, almost as if she had to explain it numerous times.

“Oh, I get it!” I exclaimed when she finished her explanation. “Heh, oh-um, my name is Crystal Éclair. This is my coltfriend Fruity.”

“And this glorious hunk of junk is Nexus,” Fruity said with a smirk as he gestured to Nexus.

“A pleasure ma’am,” The machine greeted with a respectful nod of his head.

“Certainly an odd bunch we have here, but welcome aboard Rust-Bucket City,” The Captain said in a slightly perplexed tone.

“Sooo, anyway, we are here to retrieve something that is apparently on board this ship,” Fruity said to get us back on track.

I nodded. “Yes, a piece of equipment from the M.o.A that was being transported before the bombs fell. We have been supplied its keycard by Dr Pear.”

“A piece of… wait, are you talking about a big box that nopony has been able to open unless they have a specific key?” The Captain asked in surprise.

We gave a confirmative nod.

“There has been a recent development in the Marejave close to the New Pegasus region, which requires the acquisition of this device,” Nexus explained. I was surprised he told her the truth but was vague enough that he didn’t give anything away. “It is imperative we retrieve it immediately.”

“Very well, but may I see some proof of this first?” She asked with a raised eyebrow. “Not that I don’t trust friends of Dr Pear, but the attacks from the Illustrious Moon Tribe have left us all a little suspicious of newcomers.”

“What do you mean by that?” Fruity bristled.

“Long story short, we let some zebras from the tribe on board several years back. They seemed friendly enough and we had encountered them before, so we had no reason to distrust them. They looked around the ship and then left, but after a few days, we got attacked by a large group of black striped zebras.”

“No wonder your citizens were showing some hostility towards me,” I sighed.

“I’m sorry, but we’ve had to weather attacks from them for at least five years now. The only reason we’ve gathered from listening to them when they attack is that they believe there is a ‘holy weapon’ on board.” Avery shook her head. “Lunatics,” She said under her breath.

“Well, we just want to get this and go. We don’t want to waste your time or get in your way,” I said with a bit of urgency in my voice while I pulled out the keycard and security code we were supplied.

The Captain nodded as she checked the credentials before she walked over to the back wall where four devices were mounted. Each one had a sound horn in the middle, and on either side they each had a lever. Avery walked up to the middle right one, pushed its left lever up, and put her muzzle close to the sound horn. The lever also turned out to be a horn, and that’s when I realised the bank of devices was a ship wide communication system.

“Bridge calling Engineering,” She called into the phone. There was a pause before the Captain spoke again. “Can you come up to the Bridge please, Jet?” There was another pause before the Captain nodded. “Thank you, see you in a moment.” She then pulled the lever down and stepped away.

“The ship’s top engineer will be here soon. She knows this ship better than anypony and can easily take you to the cargo hold quickly and efficiently.”

We didn’t have to wait too long for this Jet to arrive. Shortly after the call, the door to the Starboard side opened and a nervous looking yellow unicorn with a fiery orange mane in a ponytail entered the bridge. She wasn’t wearing anything, so we could get a good look at her cutie mark: a blue flame, the type you see from a gas burner or blowtorch.

“Y-you wanted to, um, see me Captain?” The mare asked meekly.

Avery smiled warmly. “You do not need to worry Jet Blaze, you are not in trouble. In fact, I have a simple task for you.” She gestured with her hoof towards us. “Can you please escort our guests to the cargo hold. They have a key for something down there.”

Jet Blaze followed her Captain’s hoof and looked at us. Her eyes widened in surprise at seeing me and Fruity, possibly because we were both pegasi, and more importantly, that I was also a zebra. Thankfully, she didn’t show any signs of hostility for me. When she saw Nexus, however, her eyes grew twice as big and became star struck. She displayed a look of great excitement as she looked at Nexus, who in turn tilted his head in confusion at the unrecognisable show of emotion towards him.

“Oh my gosh, what an awesome robot!” She squeaked and quickly rushed up to him.

“Here we go again,” Avery sighed.

“What’s your name, what type of robot are you, who made you, what can you do, ohhhh tell me please!” She rapid fire questioned the surprised machine.

“Jet, cool your jets and calm down please. Now is not the time to get all googly eyed,” The captain chastised.

The young mare’s ears wilted and she stepped back out of Nexus’s personal space.

“S-sorry Captain,”

“Right, can you please take these ponies down to the cargo hold as quickly and as efficiently as possible?”

“Um, but it’s a real mess down there and waist deep in water.”

“Can you do it is what I’m asking?”

“Um, yes captain.”

“Good, now please escort them down to the holds.”

“Yes Captain,” Jet Blaze squeaked and then looked to us. “Um, err, p-please follow me.” She turned and walked to the starboard door. She then opened it and walked onto the bridge wing, waiting for us to join her.

Once we left the bridge, she gave us a nervous smile before we descended the stairs back down to the Boat-Deck and began to walk back along it towards the door to the Grand Stairs. As we walked along the deck, we noticed that on this side a couple of the rotten lifeboats were dangling from their davits as they had slipped from their cradles. We could also see the third funnel further down the length of the ship. It was almost collapsed flat from where it had fallen over on the Boat-Deck housing, while slightly retaining its oval shape with what lay on the Boat-Deck itself.

“We will take the Grand Stairs through the Market Place all the way down to D-Deck. It will be as far down as we can go quickly, but I can easily lead you down to the holds from there,” Jet Blaze explained as we entered the top level of the stairs again to the hostile murmurings of the citizens present.

ATTENTION! THIS IS THE CAPTAIN SPEAKING!” A voice suddenly boomed over the PA system. “I have personally met the new visitors and I have deemed them trustworthy. Anypony caught interfering or harassing them will be punished accordingly. Thank you,”

“Well, that was loud,” I whined as I used the elbow of my wing to rub at my ear.

“That should help satisfy some of the ponies here, I hope,” Jet said as we entered A-Deck.

Everything went quiet as expected. I gave a nervous smile while we walked around to the stairs that would take us down, but thankfully there wasn’t anywhere near as much murmuring after the announcement. I could still feel an air of hostility though, even if it wasn’t as openly shown.

The stairs retained their style for A and B-Decks, while C-Deck looked similar but wasn’t as fancy. After that, they changed to more generic looking stairs as we moved down into D-Deck.

As we hit the bottom of the stairs on D-Deck, we found we had only two ways to go: a door on the starboard side or a door on the port side.

“So, which way?” I asked, eager to get moving.

“Um, t-this way please.” The nervous mare used her magic to open the port side door and we entered a long corridor that seemed to go the entire length of the ship. The corridor was labelled as the “Crewpony’s Passage” as, according to Jet Blaze, it once spun the length of the ship before the aft section collapsed. Once inside the corridor, we began to walk towards the bow of the ship, but as we did, a metallic groan filled the air.

Fruity’s wings snapped out as he looked around in alarm. “What in the flying fuck was that?”

“Just a stress groan. You hear them all the time in here, especially when you’re deep in the bowels of the ship,” Jet Blaze explained matter-of-factly.

“Have you never been on a ship before?” I asked Fruity.

“Of course, I’ve been on tons of ships… IN THE FUCKING SKY!” Fruity said sarcastically.

I blushed in embarrassment at forgetting Fruity wouldn’t have had access to such ships up there. Also, I highly doubted that the Enclave would have let him on any of those flying things we saw while on the train to Manehattan.

While we bickered, Jet Blazed slinked back with Nexus.

“Hi again! Ohhh, you are like, amazing!”

“Um, thank you Miss Blaze,” Nexus said, again taken aback by her excitement towards him.

“You certainly are no Ponytron, way too advanced. What are you?”

“I’m a…” He stopped as Fruity and I both gave him a look that told him not to tell her. “…a Series 4000 Mechanoid.” Thankfully, Jet Blaze didn’t seem to notice his momentary.

“Ohhh, I’ve never heard of one of those! Who made you?”

“I was a prototype service droid produced by Robronco.” There was a subtle twitch within his reply that would have easily been missed if you were not paying attention.

Fruity smirked and chuckled quietly to himself at that.

I looked from Nexus to Fruity a couple of times, as Fruity chuckled at the exact same moment Nexus told his second lie.

“You don’t have anything to do with this, do you?” I whispered.

“Hmm? Oh, I taught Ol’bucket Head how to lie,” Fruity replied with a proud smile. “Otherwise he’d have just told her exactly what he was.”

“Why in the name of Harmony would you teach him to lie?” I demanded, barely able to keep my voice above a whisper.

“It was a necessary thing to do. If he’s going to live among ponies now, he’ll need to know how to lie, as it’ll be an essential quality to have to make you more alive.”

I couldn’t help but smile and lean against the pegasus. “I knew you cared about him.” I giggled when Fruity started to sputter helplessly in trying to utter denials.

While working our way towards the front of the ship, I began to notice that there were steel girders or beams attached to the walls at regular intervals. When asked about them, Jet Blaze would tell us that they were reinforcement struts to help keep the ship stable. I supposed I could understand that since this ship was over two hundred years old now, and if the outside has had reinforcements and patching up, it was only natural that the inside also had some strengthening.

It was maybe a couple of minutes after we entered this passage that we came to an open door that led into a stairwell. The stairs going up led to crew quarters and other facilities dedicated to the crew. Only under the forward deck while going down would lead to the cargo hold and firepony’s passage. We could easily make it down to the deck below, but that was as far as we could go as the stairs to the holds had collapsed. At the bottom we could see the remains of the broken stairs and murky water.

“I was afraid of this,” Jet Blaze sighed. “I’m so sorry. No pony has had need to come to this area of the ship in months, so I haven’t been informed of any deterioration to any of its structure. Don’t worry, we can still get to the hold, but we have to detour back up to the Crewpony’s Passage and head down towards Boiler Room 8.”

“Argh, we don’t have time for this!” I growled in frustration.

Jet Blaze flinched back from my outburst.

“Crystal, calm down,” Fruity said as he rubbed at my withers with his wing. He then turned to Jet. “I’m sorry, she’s been through a lot lately, but we really can’t spare much time.”

“Um, ok, I’m sorry. Please follow me, I’ll try to be as quick as I can,” Jet whimpered as she led us back up to D-Deck and the Crewpony’s Passage, and down along its length. As we got about halfway towards the boiler room, the entire ship shuddered violently as a thunderous boom rocked the ship.

“What in the fuck was that!?” Fruity exclaimed as we nearly lost our balance from the violent shudder that followed.

“That sir, would be the ship’s six-inch gun firing,” Nexus pointed out.

“No shit, captain obvious,” Fruity grumbled.

“Why would they be firing the deck gun?” I asked in alarm.

Just as Jet Blaze opened her mouth to answer, an alert sounded from the ship’s PA system.

“Attention. All crew to battle stations. Illustrious Moon Tribe zebras spotted off the starboard bow, engage and deter. All citizens, please remain indoors and away from the windows until the situation has been resolved. Thank you.”

“Illustrious Moon, now? Oh no, we can’t get caught up in this,” I cried in despair.

“Please Jet, we need to get this device now and leave,” Fruity urged.

The young mare nodded, and we began to gallop down the corridor, almost falling over again as the ship shuddered from another violent quake from the ship’s gun. We quickly came to a steel door with a wheel in the middle, and after opening it we found that we had to descend a ladder into a very large, very dirty, and really hot room. The room’s interior was mostly taken up by the ship’s massive boilers that were keeping the ship stocked with steam. A quick observation told me that the steam from the boilers was being redirected somewhere else. Considering the aft section of the ship had collapsed, I supposed they have moved its steam turbine and power generation systems to the front. Unlike from the stairwell, which led to the bottom of the ship and into water, the boiler room was free of water.

“You shouldn’t be in here!” A pony down by the boilers yelled up at us.

“Sorry Foreman, we had to take the long way around. The stairs have gone,” Jet Blaze called back down while she led us along an elevated catwalk around the boilers, towards the bulkhead.

“What do you burn in these boilers?” Fruity asked as we rounded the tops of the boilers.

“We don’t burn anything really. It would seem the original builders knew of the controversial fuel method of this being a coal-fired vessel, so they adapted the boilers to take other fuel sources after a simple lining refit. Since we do not have any expendable or renewable combustible fuel sources, we opted to use one of the other fuel methods, and that was magical energy. The ship’s fuel sources were depleted when ponies settled in here, but after several scavenging expeditions for resources we soon found a hefty stash of Fire Opals. When I became Chief Engineer, I was informed about them and that what we have now is all that is left, but thankfully these opals can be recharged by a unicorn’s magic,” Jet explained with enthusiasm.

“Constant recharging will not do those opals any good, Miss Blaze,” Nexus calmly chastised.

The young mare sighed. “I know. I’ve already noticed that the time between recharging’s has decreased.” She shook her head. “But there is nothing else we can do unless our scavenging teams can find an alternate means of producing electricity for the ship.”

As we got to the door, Jet Blaze opened it and allowed us to enter a corridor that seemed to be two passageways in one, as we could see through the grated floor below us to the murky water below. There was a screech as Jet closed the door behind us, followed by another stress groan.

“Oh, it sounds so much worse down here,” Fruity moaned with a cringe from the sound of the echo.

As we began to walk up the corridor, I noticed how the floor was suspended from the ceiling by metal rods that connected to each of the metal floor segments. Each segment would bow slightly or groan as we all walked on them, which made my stomach drop with worry.

“There should be a spiral staircase up ahead,” Jet informed when another thunderous boom from the ship’s gun gave way to a violent shudder.

Worry filled my entire being when the corridor’s suspended floor began to bounce and creak. Seconds after the violent shudder, we all thought things were going to be ok until something popped. One of the support rods pulled through the floor form where it was holding the segment, revealing the washer and nut that had been below.

“Ah bollocks,” Fruity cursed as that rod failing was then like a zipper being undone.

With the strength of the floor compromised, combined with our weight, the zipper effect took hold and before we could react, the floor below us collapsed and we all fell nine feet into waist-deep, murky and stagnant sea water. Unfortunately, I hit the water harder than most, beside Nexus, and caused a mini-tsunami, along with a metallic clang when my butt hit the floor below the water.

After scrambling out of the water, and then almost getting washed away by the wave I caused, Jet Blaze looked towards me in confusion. She stared nervously before Nexus came out of the water next to me to make it look like we landed together and shook the water off his body. The confused look faded when she saw Nexus beside me, and I felt relief that her suspicion was off me.

“I hope I’m rust resistant,” He muttered.

“Maybe it’ll keep you quiet if you do,” Fruity snarked.

“Well, ugh,” Jet shivered from the water around us. “At least now we don’t need to go down the stairs.” She then lifted a hoof out of the murky water and pointed up ahead to a closed bulkhead door. “The holds will be up ahead through that door.”

“Finally, we can’t spare another moment,” I moaned with impatience.

Suddenly, there was a heavy bang against the door in front of us that made us pause.

“What in Equestria was that?” Fruity asked in surprise.

“It would seem something struck the door, sir,” Nexus pointed out, which made Fruity sigh and shoot the machine a flat look.

“You’re doing this on purpose now, aren’t you?”

“You hear that?” I asked when the sound of something making clicking sounds began to fill the air.

Jet Blaze narrowed her eyes in concentration as she tried to hear the sounds. I suppose I could hear it more clearly being mostly machine, and all but to Fruity and her, the clicking was muffled since it was coming from behind the bulkhead. As the young mare listened, her eyes slowly widened until a look of horror crept across her face.

“Oh no, we-we got Mirelurks,” She squeaked fearfully.

I opened my mouth ready to ask her something, when another heavy impact hit the door and water suddenly began to spray out from its edges.

“Why is there water shooting out of the door?” Fruity asked in shock.

“Damn it, I thought security said they cleared out all the Mirelurks the last time they got inside. Shit, if water is pouring out the door then that means the new Mirelurks have likely made a new breach in the hull, and now the compartment’s flooding,” Jet Blaze exclaimed.

There was another hit to the door, causing more water to pour from the gaps.

“Oh no. Hurry, we better get up the stairs before that door fails, otherwise we’ll have tons of water rushing in here and Celestia knows how many Mirelurks that’ll wanna eat your face!” The young mare exclaimed as we quickly began to wade through the water towards the spiral stairs that were off to the right around the corner.

“Fuck, water’s got into my plasma guns,” Fruity grumbled. “Can’t use these now until they dry out.”

“Oh no. I hope you got something else you can use, Mirelurks are hard to kill because of their hard shells,” Jet said as we made it to the short corridor next to the bulkhead.

“What are Mirelurks anyway?” I asked as we got into the corridor.

“You don’t know what a Mirelurk is?” She asked in surprise, like it was common knowledge or something.

“We’re pegasi, it’s not like we’re brought up on surface affairs up in the clouds,” Fruity snarked.

“Oh um, s-sorry, I, um, sorry.”

Suddenly, there was another heavy bang to the door, which then burst open with a heavy thud as the pressure of the water forced it open. A torrent of sea water began to roar down the corridor we were just in and quickly began to flood the corridor with the stairs.

“Quickly everypony. Back up to the catwalk,” Nexus said with urgency.

We quickly ran up the stairs back up to the catwalk. Next to us was the bulkhead with another sealed door, thankfully no water leaking through it, and down the other way was the catwalk that we fell through earlier. Below us, we could see the area was filling up water and it had already risen to twice the depth it was at before. While we were looking down at the rushing water below, a large brown, diamond-shaped object floated along. By the shape and texture of the object, it wasn’t a piece of wood or debris, and it also had barnacles on it which suggested it was some form of sea life.

“What was that?” Fruity asked after he noticed the brown thing float by below. He then quickly whirled around on Nexus and jabbed him with his hoof. “Don’t you say a word.”

Nexus put a hoof to his chest. “I wasn’t going to say anything, Sir.”

“Judging by the size of its shell, I would say that was a Mirelurk Razorclaw. We should avoid that if we can. Those things have enough power in their claws to cut an average pony in half,” Jet cautioned.

The water seemed to stop rising a mere foot below the catwalk, which was good. It meant that the water in the compartments had equalised and now we could continue.

Jet Blaze used her magic to grasp the release wheel on the bulkhead door and grunted with effort as she tried to turn the wheel.

“Ugh, it’s jammed,” She whined, and with a huff and a puff, she released her hold on the rust-coated wheel.

I was about to step up before I turned to Nexus. “Nexus, can you give it a go please?” I asked him.

“Certainly, ma’am.” He then approached the door and grasped the wheel with his forehooves.

The metal groaned as the locking arms slowly began to move as the machine exerted his superior robotic strength onto the wheel. With a screech the locks disengaged, and the door was released, but we still had to open it. It would seem being in a flooded compartment had corroded the metal enough to almost rust it shut. Thankfully, with Nexus we were able to force the door open with a loud, straining screech.

The door opened to reveal a large open space with mesh fences to act as dividing walls. It looked like each side was split into three storage compartments, and each mesh fence compartment housed several crates which were in various stages of deterioration. The water level seemed to get gradually shallower towards the front of the ship where it sat higher on the beach.

“This is Cargo Hold 1. Where is it you need to go again?” Jet asked as we entered the first cargo hold.

I looked at the small piece of documentation regarding the weapon and its transportation detail to find where it would be. “Um, Hold 2, Block 4.”

“So where’s that?” Fruity asked while he looked over the catwalk.

“That would be in the next Cargo Hold beyond the bulkhead up ahead. Your device will be in the first holding pen on the starboard side,” The young mare answered.

“Alright then, let’s get a move on.” I quickly began to trot towards the next bulkhead.

“Whoa, slow down. This compartment had a Mirelurk in it, there could be more,” Jet Blaze warned.

And sure enough, in my haste to get what we came for, I alerted another one of those crab monsters and it burst up out of the water, making me jump back in fright. It looked up at me from below the catwalk and thrust its large pincer claw into the corroded metal, piercing right through on its first strike.

“Holy shit!” I squeaked.

“I can’t shoot the bastard while my battlesaddle is all waterlogged,” Fruity complained.

“My revolver won’t pierce that thing’s shell either.”

“Do not threat sir and ma’am. I will handle this,” Nexus said as he approached the railing of the catwalk.

“Don’t do anything stupid, Freak-face,” Fruity warned as he put himself in front of Blaze protectively.

Nexus waited for the Mirelurk (which appeared to be all green in colour) to move out from below the catwalk, and when it did, he jumped over the railing and down on top of the mutated crab. The creature reacted quickly and reached up with its large claws, grabbing Nexus’s forelegs with each of its large pincers, but the machine’s heavy weight pulled it down into the water again. I gasped in shock at the unexpected development, especially when the monster resurfaced with Nexus hanging by his forelegs in its claws, now having gotten used to his weight.

“Nexus!” I cried in alarm.

I could see another pair of much smaller pincers on the creature’s torso. They seemed to be trying to pinch at the machine’s armour while it had him suspended, but they were not getting through.

“Damn it, chromedome,” Fruity whined as he looked around for something to use as a weapon.

Suddenly, Nexus pulled his rear end up and kicked out with his hind legs, kicking the crab in the face with a boot-covered hoof. The creature let out a burbling cry and dropped Nexus, who then landed on his hooves. The Mirelurk recovered quickly and swung a pincer down at Nexus’s neck to decapitate him, but he ducked under it, came up quickly with an uppercut, and clocked the creature again in the face which made it stagger back on its four legs. The green-shelled Mirelurk made a pitiful whimpering sound as it looked at Nexus, a large crack now visible on the shell across its face.

“Wow, so cool! He’s beating a Mirelurk all by himself with his bare hooves!” Jet Blaze gushed at watching the infiltrator use his cybernetic strength to overwhelm his enemy.

“Finish it, Nexus!” I called down to him.

The machine nodded to us as he approached the injured Mirelurk, which was now trying to back away from the machine. Nexus didn’t let it escape as he quickly closed the gap and threw a hoof punch towards the crack in the creature’s face. The Mirelurk raised its pincers to block the attack and Nexus was forced to grab a hold of one of the pincer arms. He then twisted his forelegs around the pincer arm and began to pull as he tried to disarm the creature. The crab monster let out a painful shriek when Nexus kicked at the joint in the arm with a hind hoof while he was pulling on it, which caused the arm to break in two. The crab screeched and shrieked in pain as Nexus yanked its broken claw arm away, but this gave him the opening he needed. While he had hold of the pincer, he turned it around and thrust it into the creature’s damaged face. The Mirelurk’s face split in half as the claws tore through the broken shell and into its brain. The Mirelurk let out one last gurgle before it toppled over onto its side, dead with its own severed pincer arm lodged into its face.

“Threat eliminated,” Nexus said with a hint of pride.

“While you’re not doing anything, go close the bulkhead door so that other one doesn’t come looking for its friend,” Fruity said with a hint of sarcasm while he pointed down the way we came.

“Yes sir,” Nexus replied as he trudged through the water towards the burst bulkhead.

While he was doing that, we found some stairs that got us down to the bottom of the ship. The water was chest deep and the floor was covered in sediment, but the closer to the bow we got, the shallower it became. We heard a soft metallic groan and looked down towards the way we came and saw the top of the bulkhead door close. It was deep enough back there that Nexus was submerged while he pulled the door closed.

“Good thing he don’t need air,” Fruity commented.

Suddenly, a metal pole poked out of the water before it got wedged against the door frame, and then Nexus’s head soon emerged from the water as he made his way back towards us.

“I had to wedge a metal bar into the release wheel since the door was buckled,” Nexus explained as he rejoined us.

“Did you see the other Mirelurk in there?” Jet Blaze asked.

“Yes ma’am. It was idly floating in the deeper portion of the other compartment. It didn’t notice me.” This answer made Jet smile. I think just the fact the machine was talking to her was making her happy.

“Hey, that bulkhead door up ahead is ajar,” Fruity pointed out.

Sure enough, the door up ahead was slightly open. I felt anxious and slightly excited to finally get this over with. The only thing on my mind was getting this so we could rescue Xian. I again began to push on towards the door.

“Oh, she’s off again,” Fruity groaned. “Oi, get your plot back here.”

“The longer we take, the more chance that asshole will likely hurt Xian,” I growled.

“Did her mane just… what’s going on?” Jet Blaze asked in surprise.

“Magical energy readings are at their highest I’ve felt from her. Her Pegasus magic is radiating strongly,” Nexus said, just as surprised.

“Crystal, calm down please. We will get the Pulse Wave Emitter and go save our daughter, but we can’t do that if you let your emotions run wild,” Fruity said softly as he approached me. “Please.”

“Ok, ok. I’m sorry,” I whimpered. I took several deep breaths to help calm myself down and settle my nerves. We were so clos now. I could hold it together a little longer.

“I should get a hold of Security after this and tell them Mirelurks are getting back inside. I should also get a team together, so we can find and patch the breach they are using to get inside,” Jet Blaze thought out loud, to try and get our minds off what our real problem was.

The ship made another horrifically loud groan, which down in the hold sounded like a death groan as the old metal almost felt like it could shatter at any moment.

“I need to get off this ship,” Fruity whined. “These sounds are freaking me out.”

“Once you’ve lived here for a few years, you get used to it,” Jet smiled as we began to approach the ajar bulkhead door that led into Cargo Hold 2.

Nexus stepped ahead of us as he gripped the door and pulled it open with his robotic strength. The door screeched loudly as its rusty hinges were forced to move. Once open, we cautiously stepped inside with Nexus in front.

“It’s clear,” Nexus called back to us.

“What you are after is in this holding pen,” Jet announced as she gestured to a mesh-fenced section to the right of us. The mesh gate had come off its hinges and lay in the shallow water. Inside the cargo section were numerous crates, some wooden which were rotten to fuck, and metal containers which were also in various states of corrosion. However, there was one box that stood out to us: a military green box at the bottom of a pile of wooden crates that had the markings of the M.o.A on the side and had an interface that was active.

“Alright, let’s do this,” Fruity said as we approached the crate.

I nodded and took out the security card while Fruity used the documentation to input its authorisation code. Once the code was inputted and verified by the interface, I then swiped the card into the card reader. The red light blinked several times before it flashed green, and with a beep and a hiss, the crate split open and revealed its contents.

An internal section raised up the weapon for us. Sitting on the cradle was a weapon I would have said was something out of a science fiction movie, as it looked like an alien ray gun you would likely see in such a thing. It was silver in colour, mouth-operated, had copper coils around the main body next to the mouth trigger, a silver cylindrical main body with two sets of diodes on either side, and a smooth barrel that ended at a large flared dish like muzzle.

“Weapon identified. Pulse Wave Emitter.

Weapon designed as response to Disruption Weapon technology. Weapon fires electrically charged blasts, capable of shorting out power armour and other mechanical devices. If emitter frequency is changed from default and to one of several pre-sets, weapon would be capable of causing fire damage, concussive, and more.”

“Hey, are you ok? You kinda spaced out on us there,” Fruity asked after he shook me.

I shook my head. “Ugh, yeah, uhh, my electronic brain decided to do that thing again when I saw the Pulse Wave Emitter.”

“Ah ok, well let’s take it and go.” Fruity stepped up to the crate and used a wing to grab the weapon. As soon as the weapon was in his grasp there was an electronic screech from a speaker.

“Attention. This is Captain Avery. Zebra attack has been repelled, I repeat, Zebra attack has been repelled, and all citizens are free to resume your daily activities. All guards please remain at your posts until further notice. Thank you.”

“Celestia almighty!” Fruity yelled as he jumped. “Was she just waiting for me to pick that up to announce that? That scared the living tartarus out of me.”

“Alright, job done. Now let’s go, we can’t afford to waste any more time,” I grumbled.

Fruity nodded. “Ok Jet, we need to get topside ASAP.”

“Alright, we will have to go back the way we came but at least we know a direct route now,” She said as we all turned around to backtrack.

Thankfully, backtracking through the holds and through the boiler room didn’t take too long at all, and the Mirelurk didn’t seem interested in us at all despite the catwalk being a foot underwater towards the bulkhead door to the boiler room. We had to be extremely quick getting through the door, as water would start pouring into the boiler room again. Luckily, the small amount of water that got in would easily be dealt with. After that, we quickly made our way to the Crewpony’s Passage.

We entered the long corridor to a surprise. Stood several feet down the corridor towards aft were four black striped zebras in red cloaks. Each of the zebras were also adorned in numerous gold rings around their forelegs, necks or dangling from their ears, and each one looked surprised to see us.

“What the fuck!? How did they get in here?” Fruity exclaimed.

“Eep! Illustrious Moon,” Jet Blaze whimpered.

The Illustrious Moon Zebras looked at us in shock, their eyes flicked from me, to Nexus, and to Fruity; or more specifically, his wing where he had the emitter tucked safely under it.

“Two artificials and they have the Holy Weapon,” One of them exclaimed, a zebra mare.

“We must report this to the elder,” A zebra stallion suggested.

“We are not equipped to combat the artificials. Retreat, the elder must know,” Another stallion confirmed.

“You ain’t going nowhere,” Fruity threatened. Before any of us could act to stop them, however, one of them threw something at the floor which caused an explosion of smoke. We coughed and sputtered as the smoke swept over us, but when it cleared the four zebras were gone.

“How the fuck?” I coughed out when I saw that they were nowhere to be seen.

“Smoke screen, used to hide their retreat while using their stealth cloaks to evade detection,” Nexus said.

“Captain Obvious, shut up,” Fruity griped.

“How did they get in here anyway. I thought the attack had been repelled?” I asked.

“They um, must have got in through the, um, wrecked section of the ship,” Jet Blaze suggested. We nodded as it sounded plausible.

“The attack was possibly a distraction to allow an infiltration team to slip in undetected for the Pulse Wave Emitter,” Nexus added his opinion.

“We better let the captain know before we make ourselves scarce,” Fruity suggested, which made me internally groan in frustration.

As we began to make our way back up the decks towards the bridge, something from our encounter began to eat at me. I turned to Fruity as we began to climb the Grand Stairs.

“How did they know what I was? We haven’t encountered any Illustrious Moon zebras before,” I whispered to him.

Fruity blinked as he thought. “Good question. I was wondering that myself. Hmm.” We started to enter the market area again of the Grand Stairs where the citizens had begun to resume their daily lives. “The only thing I can think of is that they must have seen you damaged at some point while we were unaware of them.”

It made sense. We have been in the Marejave longer than the Manehattan region, and the zebras of the tribe would likely know the area far better and could have seen me at any time. I just hoped they wouldn’t start doing what Colonel Ironside was doing to me right now.

After we left the Grand Stairs with only a few insults and accusations of bringing the zebra attack, we made our way to the bridge and were greeted by Captain Avery as she stood on the bridge wing overlooking the forward deck and its two guns.

“Ah, welcome back. Were you successful in your search?”

“Yes, but we have something more important to tell you,” I started while my wings twitched with irritation.

“Yeah, we ran into a group of Illustrious Moon zebras down there,” Fruity continued. “They must have snuck aboard during the attack by the ruined part of the ship.”

“That is a problem. Thank you for bringing it to my attention. I will get in touch with security and see if anything can be done to monitor the uninhabitable section,” The captain thanked us with a grateful nod.

“Since we have what they came for, maybe they will stop attacking you now,” Fruity suggested before he turned to Jet Blaze. “Thanks for the help.”

“Oh, um, thank you,” She smiled with a blush.

“Yes, thank you Miss Blaze. You were an immense help,” Nexus complimented, which made the young mare smile brightly.

“Um, yea, thanks… Can we go now?” I moaned, my patience now at an all-time low.

“Yeah, we should go now. Thank you for this. This device will be a big help for us,” Fruity said as we turned to leave.

“You are welcome, and please give my regards to Dr Pear,” Captain Avery said with a wave as we walked down the steps.

After again backtracking through the Grand Stairs, through the First-Class Cabins and back onto the Forward Deck, we took the lift down to the beach. It was mid-afternoon by the time we met up again with Oxanna, who was sat at the top of a dune that overlooked the lagoon.

“Ah, welcome back. I see you were successful. Are you ready to return?” She asked when she noticed us.

“Yes, we are so ready,” I said, very eager to get back so we could get to the facility.

“Very well. Just a moment, please.” She closed her eyes. After a few seconds she nodded, and her horn blazed to life. “Please stand back,” She warned as she begun the spell. Within moments, a disc of energy materialised before us. The swirling purple magic then pulled back to reveal the front of the ski lodge with Dr Pear standing in front of the doors. “It is ready.”

“Thank you,” I said, and without any further delays I walked through the portal. I cringed at the unpleasantness of passing through the barrier, but it only lasted for a few seconds, and before I knew it I was back in the cold air of Mt Coltson in the Alicorn Sanctuary.

“Alright doc, we got it. Now what?” Fruity said with a shiver after he passed through the portal after me.

“We can’t wait any longer Fruity. We got the weapon, now let’s go!” I growled, my patience now gone. I flared my wings, and with a powerful beat I sped up into the air and began to propel myself as fast as equinely possible towards the Production Facility.

“Crystal wait… Shit!” Fruity shouted after me.

XXXXX

“This is not good,” Dr Pear said in alarm. “You better get after her and stop her.”

“Fuck, just what the hell has gotten into her today?” Fruity whined as he fanned out his wings in preparation for flight.

“She cannot enter the Facility alone. You CAN NOT let that happen.”

“What?” The Pegasus stallion asked, caught a little off guard by the seriousness of the cybernetic doctor’s warning.

“If she enters the Production Facility alone than all is lost.” Dr Pear prodded Fruity in the chest to drive her point home. “Inside the facility, he doesn’t need her alive. He will kill her and harvest her body for my spell. NOW GET GOING!”

“Y-yes ma’am,” Fruity squeaked in shock and fear for his fillyfriend. He quickly beat his wings and shot up after her, following the teal and golden orange contrail left behind by the mare.

Dr Pear watched as the two pegasi disappeared from view and let out a heavy sigh. “Please catch her Fruity. He can’t win, or all of Equestria will fall to a cybernetic future with no will.” After another moment, she realised there was still another member of Crystal’s group still there with her: the machine that had joined them after once being sent to hunt them down.

“Nexus?” She blinked in confusion as the Infiltrator stepped up to her.

“Is there a way to get to the facility ahead of them?” He asked, a hint of worry in his strong voice.

Dr Pear thought for a moment until she noticed that both Tratos and Oxanna were still there. “Yes, the Phase Gate, but we must act quickly.” The robotic mare then turned to the two alicorns. “We need a Gate to the Production Facility ASAP,”

-Meanwhile in the skies above the Marejave Wasteland-

The purple pegasus stallion huffed and puffed as he pushed himself to his absolute limit to catch up with his speedy fillyfriend. His wings burned and ached as he finally managed to pull up alongside her after they passed over what used to be the industrial district of Las Pegasus.

“Crystal, we need to stop!” Fruity shouted over the wind.

“No! Xian needs me! I can’t abandon her and leave her to die!” The pegasus zebra shouted back, her eyes a blazing orange.

Shortly after that declaration, Crystal began to accelerate and pull ahead of the struggling purple pegasus stallion.

“Oh, come on!” Fruity whined as his fillyfriend started to pull away. “Crystal, you’ll be heading into a trap!”

His warning fell on deaf ears as she continued to gain speed while sparks of electricity began to spark off her in random spurts.

“What’s going on?” Fruity asked himself as he began to witness a change. While more sparks began to dance around her like an aura, her mane and tail from the roots to the tips changed to a golden orange colour and her speed increased even more.

“I can’t keep up. Fuck, you fat bastard this is what happens when you get obsessed with Mutfruit,” Fruity chided himself.

Suddenly, the air began to crackle loudly. As he looked up to see Crystal as she pulled away, he saw the formation of a mach cone form around her.

“No way,” He gasped. “Just who’s magic was she fused with?”

The cone grew thinner and thinner until with a powerful burst of light and sound, there was an explosion and Crystal disappeared across the horizon in a burst of lightning. Fruity felt a shockwave crash into him and sent him tumbling through the air and towards the ground. By the time he finally managed to regain control, Crystal was gone, and an expanding ring of lightning and thunder clouds were all that he could see.

“Did she just do a Sonic Lightboom?” He asked himself in amazed bafflement.

Chapter 19: Confrontation

View Online

Fallout Equestria: Influx

Chapter 19: Confrontation


A siren blared throughout the facility, and red warning lights flashed in every room and corridor. While the alarm blared, the large alicorn-like robot calmly walked into the control and up to the large monitor at the central console. The screen displayed a map of the Marejave, and there was a yellow blip moving towards their location on the map at a relatively high speed.

“Long range proximity alert was triggered along with a high magical energy warning,” Colonel Ironside explained through the speakers.

Unit-1000 sat patiently as it listened.

“Everything is progressing as predicted, although a little later than anticipated. Regardless, I-01 is now on its way.” The wireframe face of the colonel phased through the map to appear on the screen. He wore a sadistic smile as he looked down upon his creation. “When it arrives, let it reach the control room unobstructed. It can’t be allowed to retreat.”

“Affirmative, sir.”

“I may not be able to use you like I had originally intended, but once you have flesh and alicorn magic…” He then mumbled quietly to himself. “Hmmm. Absorbing the magic of three or maybe five of these manufactured ones might be enough.” He looked back up at the machine and resumed talking normally to it. “You may yet be able to be presented to the ponies of the Wasteland as the False Princess that they can fall behind.” He grinned darkly.

Warning! Proximity Alert!

“Get into position; we don’t have much time.”

The machine gave a nod of acknowledgement and left the control room.

XXXXX

“Now her sudden hot-headedness makes sense now! The golden orange hair, the orange eyes, that teal and gold contrail. I recognise them,” Dr Pear said in astonishment. “Being coupled with an echo of Lightning Dust might not be a good thing in this situation, I hope it won’t be present when she engages him.”

“Dr Pear!” Nexus shouted to get her attention.

“Yes, Nexus?” She asked as she gave the machine her full attention.

“I need to go there. Ma’am shot off without waiting for any of us, and I fear she’ll fall for the Colonel’s trap if we don’t stop her.”

“You’re right. The influence Lightning Dust will have on her mind right now will deliver her into his hooves.” Dr Pear looked around for the two alicorns that helped bring the group back to the old resort after their mission at the wreck of the RMS Luna. “Ah, Tratos, Oxanna. We need your assistance once more with a phase gate as soon as possible please.”

The two green alicorns approached the two robotic ponies. “Of course, doctor. Where would you like to go?” Tratos asked softly.

“Meadowlark Hill,” Nexus informed immediately.

“Hmm. Neither of us have been there, the area around the hill has been considered a no go area by the doctor.” Tratos said with a sigh.

“Then where is the closest you can get me?”

“I have been to the MASA Headquarters. Isn’t that in view of Meadowlark Hill?” Oxanna asked.

“It is, Oxanna,” Dr Pear clarified.

“Ok. We can Phase Gate to MASA HQ, and then I can teleport you to the hill.”

“Right, that will work,” Nexus agreed.

The sky was suddenly lit up by a bright flash and rings of expanding lightning and thunderclouds, which were soon followed by a loud thunderous boom.

“What in Celestia’s name was that?” Tratos asked in shock.

“That, my friends, is a sonic boom made of thunder and lightning. A Lightboom, I suppose,” Dr Pear summarised. “It would seem Crystal has broken the sound barrier. Very impressive.”

“We need to move now!” Nexus urged.

The alicorns nodded in agreement and began to channel their magic.

XXXXX

“Oh, how do I get you out, how do I get you out?” Pixie whined to herself as she paced around the old living quarters.

The young zebra filly, Xian, shivered and whimpered as she lay on the old sofa in the middle of the living room area. She kept her eyes on the rambling robot as it paced back and forth.

“I could teleport you out,” Pixie mused as she turned to look at the young filly with a hopeful smile, but that instantly fell. “Ohhh, no that won’t work.”

Pixie’s holographic disguise flickered as she nervously paced around the coffee table in front of the sofa.

“He would know I’m trying to disobey, and he’d also detect the magic… or ‘she’ would.” Pixie spoke that last part in a quivering voice, like she was afraid of this ‘she’ character.

The machine stopped pacing, gave a defeated sigh and sat down, her shoulders slumping as she looked over at the terrified filly.

“I… I’m so sorry about all this, I… I never wanted to do any of this.” She sniffled. “I-I know it’s no excuse but I had no choice. I hope you can forgive me.”

Suddenly, the room was bathed in a warning red hue and a siren rung out.

Warning! Proximity Alert!”

“What’s going…?” Pixie squeaked out in shock, but was interrupted when she began to receive a transmission.

“Unit-3, everything is going according to plan,” The voice of Colonel Ironside said in her head.

“C-colonel?!”

“I-01 is on its way. When I give you the order, terminate the captive.”

“Wait, what!” Pixie cried in shock. “B-but sir, she’s just an innocent and helpless little filly.”

“She is a member of the enemy race that destroyed Equestria. She must be dealt with accordingly, and you WILL follow orders.”

Pixie began to shiver and cringed back like she smelt something foul. Her holographic disguise showed her grit her teeth, before she calmed down and her facial expression went blank. She then looked at the filly. Her blue eyes flashed crimson, making the filly whimper and cower deeper into the cushions.

“As you command, sir,” Unit-3 said, her sweet voice losing all emotion, becoming toneless and electronic.

XXXXX

“How long have the robots of this place been fucked?” A scavenger stallion asked as he kicked the sand-riddled husk of a Mr Hoofty robot that lay in front of the MASA Headquarters building.

“I dunno, hun, but whatever screwed them must’ve hit them with something really hard to penetrate their bodies like this,” A scavenger mare replied as she examined the robot body where there was a large deep hole in its chassis.

The male scavenger looked up suddenly. He was a unicorn and his horn had begun to spark with yellow magic.

“Ahh! What the fuck, where the hell did this magic surge come from?” He whined as he held a hoof to his temple.

His wife came up to his side to comfort him, when suddenly a purple spark of magic materialised in front of them, making them gasp and back away a few steps. The purple spark sputtered and fluctuated before it began to grow and develop into a large swirling disc of magic.

“Um, what’s going on?” The mare asked in surprise at the development.

“I don’t know, but that’s a lot of magic.”

After a few moments, the magic rippled and a large green alicorn stepped out. As the alicorn exited the swirling magic, the two ponies retreated to the bushes at the perimeter of the MASA HQ’s premises. The large mare shook herself as she came fully out of the portal, casting off flecks of snow that rapidly melted in the Marejave heat.

The two ponies huddled close together.

“An alicorn?!” The mare whispered quietly in surprise as she crouched down low behind a bush.

“Why would a Sanctuary Alicorn come here of all places?” The stallion whispered as he crouched down by his wife’s side.

The alicorn looked around several times to be sure there was no danger. She did notice two shapes partially hidden behind a bush, though she didn’t see them as a threat, but rather as curious locals. Satisfied that the coast was relatively clear, she turned to the swirling disc of magic and tapped it with her horn. The swirling magic stopped and then pulled back from the centre to reveal the ski lodge of the Alicorn Sanctuary, as if the disc was a window.

“It is safe to come through,” Oxanna called through the portal. The two scavengers sighed in relief as the alicorn appeared to have not noticed them.

The alicorn moved away from the portal slightly to give who was to come through some room. As she moved away, she gave the two scavengers a better view of the portal, and they gasped in surprise when they saw a skeletal robot with glowing red eyes and wearing scorched combat armour step through the portal.

“What the fuck is that?!” Both ponies practically yelled together.

The machine turned to look at the building. “Feels like it was only yesterday I tracked her here,” Nexus said to himself in nostalgia. His glowing red eyes widened slightly and he turned to the north. “She’s coming in fast. We don’t have much time. Please, teleport me to Meadowlark Hill now.”

“Of course.” The alicorn nodded as she approached the robot and placed a hoof onto his back, pressing it firmly so she had a grip on him. Her horn lit up with magic, and with a fizzle and a pop, she and the machine were gone in a flash.

The two scavengers stood up once the coast was clear and the portal closed. They looked at each other in bewilderment as they both had a single question on their minds.

“What just happened?”

XXXXX

Fruity cried in shock and surprise as he tumbled through the air. He had been knocked out of the sky by the shockwave of the Sonic Lightboom, which had disrupted the flow of air and pegasus magic in his wings. He flapped his wings uselessly for several long moments as he plummeted out of the sky and towards the desert below. He looked over his shoulder as his tumbling caused him to roll onto his back to see the ground rushing up to meet him, and he let out a startled cry.

“Oh bollocks to hell!” He began to use all his strength to kick out his fore and hind legs on his right side while at the same time closing the wing on his left side. The shift in weight got him to roll slightly in the air, and with the wind blowing against his still open wing it helped to push him all the way over. Once he had righted himself, he snapped out his left wing to stabilise himself and then put himself into a dive. He tucked his wings to his sides, narrowed his eyes and grit his teeth in concentration as he gained speed. Once he was sure he had gathered as much speed as he could get, he snapped open his wings. He pulled up and swooped around mere feet from the desert floor before he began to ascend back into the air.

“Oh thank the creator, I hope to never do that again,” He gasped in relief.

He rose back up to where he could still see a sparkling teal and golden yellow magical contrail shining brightly in the sky, and began to follow it as fast as his wings could carry him. If it wasn’t for the dire situation he found himself he would’ve marvelled at the beautiful and wondrous sight that his mare had been able to pull off as she broke the sound barrier. Even after several minutes, the rings of thunder clouds and lightning were still expanding out across the Marejave skies.

“Oh, you fat bastard Fruity, you are so going on a diet and quitting drinking after this.” He groaned and panted as he struggled to keep his speed up.

After several more minutes of flying, the contrail was still visible but the expanding rings from the Lightboom had dissipated to leave clear blue skies. The purple pegasus was huffing and puffing as he pushed himself as hard as he could, determined to make it to the Facility and hopefully stop his fillyfriend from doing something stupid.

“Ugh, I need to work out more,” He panted tiredly.

“Hey little birdy. Wanna play?” A high-pitched and unusually happy voice called from behind him.

Startled by the sudden voice, Fruity looked back behind him and gasped when he saw a pegasus in common Raider attire. It surprised him to see a pegasus among the likes of raiders. The pegasus was a dull cream colour, and from the voice sounded female. He was unable to see the pegasus’ face since the raider wore a sack mask that encapsulated her head. The body of the raider also suggested female as it wasn’t as large or as bulky as most stallions either.

“Fuck my life,” Fruity groaned. “Piss off, nutcase.”

“Aww, that’s not very nice. I gotta punish you now.” The raider mare giggled in glee as she reached to her belt with her forehooves and pulled off a pair of daggers.

“You can get those away from me,” Fruity warned.

Fruity grit his teeth and growled. He was at his limit and couldn’t push himself any harder. Therefore, he was getting more tired, which meant he would be getting gradually slower, and the raider would easily be able to reach him. He didn’t have any weapons since he had to leave his waterlogged battlesaddle behind at the resort, which wouldn’t be operational until it dried out.

“C’mon, come here! I don’t want to have to clip your wings,” The raider taunted.

Fruity’s eyes widened when he felt his rapidly beating wings brush against something on the waist band of his worn out duster. He looked under his wing and found the Pulse Wave Emitter bouncing about on his belt. Despite his own hooves, the Emitter was his only weapon, but as far as he knew it was designed to be an anti-robot/power armour weapon, not meant to be effective against a pony; so he had no idea if it would be of use at all. If anything it could give him some breathing room. Fruity quickly snatched the weapon from his belt and flipped over, and began to awkwardly fly backwards while pointing the weapon at the raider.

“Ohhh, look at you flying all fancy-like.” The raider mare giggled.

“Oh, will you shut up,” Fruity groaned as he brought the weapon to his mouth and took hold of its mouth grip with his maw.

“Hehe, you even have a foal’s Captain Stardust toy gun. How cute.” She laughed, and then raised her legs in preparation to stab.

Fruity mumbled incoherently around the mouth grip before he used his tongue to pull on the trigger. The dish-like muzzle of the weapon began to glow an electric blue before it discharged a donut of electrical energy toward the pegasus mare. The electrical discharge was slightly off target, but being at such close proximity it washed over the mare anyway. She screamed in agony as she was given an electric shock and her muscles were given a strong stimulating pulse that made them seize up. The mare’s wings immediately froze as she was given the equivalent of a taser shock and began to fall out of the sky. Fruity watched as the mare under the influence of the shock was unable to regain the use of her wings in time, and slammed into the remnants of a desert road.

“Well, at least some desert critters will get to enjoy a nice road pizza,” Fruity solemnly commented before he flipped back over and continued his flight.

XXXX

The rocky base of Meadowlark Hill was quiet save for a soft wind blowing across the sandy terrain. The quiet was soon ruined as the wind suddenly picked up and begun to swirl around, as if something was drawing the air in just above the ground. As the soft winds blew, there came a flash and a crackle from the centre, releasing arks of energy, before another blinding flash of light appeared, followed by one last crackling pop; the strong winds dispersed, leaving the area quiet once again.

“Well, that was an experience,” Nexus said as he readjusted himself to his new surroundings, not to mention being overwhelmed by multiple onboard alerts from the sudden magical displacement.

“We have arrived, Nexus,” Oxanna announced.

Nexus shook his head as his fuzzy vision cleared, the magical surge from the teleport having caused interference with some of his systems. “Yes, we have indeed. Thank you, Miss Oxanna.” He then focused on the hill before him. “Ok, Miss Éclair will be here shortly. Can you please fall back to the MASA HQ and be ready to open a Phase Gate for us once this is all over?”

“Of course. Good luck out here, Nexus. I hope things will go smoothly.” The alicorn then disappeared in another flash of light.

Nexus didn’t look back to watch the alicorn teleport out. Instead, he stayed focused on the hill as the emotion of dread began to fill him. “Yes. So do I,” He muttered to himself.

Despite his memory of the facility having been erased, he couldn’t help but feel a sense of foreboding since he knew what awaited them inside, namely Unit-1000 and Colonel Ironside. He was pulled out of his frozen state when an alert flashed into his HUD that told him that Crystal would arrive very soon.

“I must prevent Ma’am from sealing her fate.” He began to walk around the hill at a brisk pace to find the trail he used when he first left the Facility. He trotted quickly until he found the road sign for a campsite and followed the dirt road up the hill. About half-way up the trail, he came to a fork in the road. Going left would have him continue onward toward the campsite at the summit of the hill, but going right would lead him to the entrance to the Facility. The signs at the fork labelled the right path as dangerous and that there was a closed mine up ahead.

Nexus froze as he followed the right path about half-way toward the entrance, inside the small valley cut into the hill. On the ground were small rails, partially hidden to give the illusion of a mine rail system for those that walked by, but hidden behind the large rocks was a huge concrete slab built into the hill, with a large heavy steel door in it. That door was wide open as if it was an invitation; they were clearly expected. However, none of this was why Nexus stopped. His pause derived from sensing the powerful energy signatures of the active robots inside: Unit-3 and Unit-1000.

“This could be more difficult than originally anticipated,” he muttered. The robot turned around as another alert flashed in his HUD, but as he put his back to the open door, he felt the mechanical equivalent of something making his skin crawl. He quickly looked back to the dark open doorway, and he swore for a brief moment he saw two glowing red lights in the darkness. “I’m sure I saw something, but now isn’t the time to lose my cool,” he said in a slightly quivering voice.

Nexus faced forward again just in time to see the rapidly approaching teal and golden yellow comet that was Crystal under the speed boost of her Lightboom. The sparkling comet arched down as it came in for its approach, until the blazing aura suddenly dissipated as it got close. The zebra pegasus reared back and began flapping her wings hard to bring herself to a complete stop. Once her forward momentum had ceased, she landed on the gravelly ground of the dugout valley in front of Nexus. She wore a perplexed expression as she saw her robotic friend already there before her. She opened her mouth to say something, but winced when her eyes and hair flashed from their orange and yellow colours, and then faded back to their original blue eyes and white and grey stripes. Once her colouration had reverted, she fell to one knee, panting heavily.

“Ma’am, are you ok?” Nexus asked in concern as he rushed over to her.

The cybernetic pegasus mare grunted with effort as she rose back up while still panting tiredly. “I… drained all of my… secondary power core’s… energy doing that and… my main is down to… forty percent,” She gasped out.

Nexus turned around and put himself beside her so she could lean on him for support.

“But… a better question is… how are you… here before me?” Crystal asked with some irritation in her voice while she leaned on the robot pony.

“Tratos and Oxanna’s Phase Gate. The same method we used to go to Rust-Bucket City,” Nexus clarified. “But I’m here to stop you going in there alone and without Mr Fruity.”

Crystal nearly threw herself off him but was too tired to put the effort in, but she did whip her head around to face him, a furious glare being levelled at him. “Why in Celestia’s name would you stop me from trying to save my daughter?”

“Because if you go in there alone, you and her will both die.”

“What?!”

“She is bait for you. You go in there, he will have what he wants, and he won’t need her anymore. He will kill her once he has you,” Nexus explained, hoping it would get through to the angry mare.

Crystal looked conflicted. Her maternal instincts were telling her to rescue her foal at all costs, but the rational part of her brain had heard what was said and was beating down that instinct with the cold, hard stick of logic that charging in there alone and without a plan would kill her foal and herself.

“What do we do then?” Crystal asked him anxiously.

“We wait for Mr Fruity who had took off after you. He has the Pulse Wave Emitter. If we are to have a chance to even the odds, it is with the Emitter in our hooves.”

“B-but Xian?” Crystal cried.

“He won’t risk harming her until he has you where he wants you, otherwise there would be no reason for you to be here.”

Crystal, with tears of worry for her daughter in her eyes, looked up to the sky where a bright contrail of teal and golden orange was still hanging in the air, and whimpered. “Please hurry, Fruity.”

XXXXX

“This was not expected. I-02 IS was teleported in by an alicorn before the arrival of I-01.” Colonel Ironside observed from the scan data from local scanners. “Unit-1000, can you interact with the rogue unit?”

“Negative, sir. Unit-1002’s remote signal transmitter is non-functional,” The machine replied via its comlink as it had moved out of the control room to be in position.

“Hmm. What is it doing?” Ironside asked as he monitored the scanner’s data stream.

Soon the scanner began to display data that the energy signature of I-02 IS was moving, and after several minutes, the machine came into view of an external security camera.

“It has changed since I last saw it. Looks weathered and beaten,” Ironside commented.

The grainy security footage showed the machine turn around and put his back to the door just as a blur of movement came down and impacted the ground in front of him. When the light and the dust faded, his quarry came into view.

“I-01 is here. The appearance of the rogue unit cannot change our plans now. Stick to the plan.”

XXXXX

I stared up into the sky, feeling scared and frustrated. Scared for my adopted daughter that was most likely scared out of her mind right now in the bowels of the Facility, and frustrated at myself for my stupidity in giving into the voice in my head. I shouldn’t have let the voice get to me, riling me up and getting me so angry that I couldn’t see reason after the abduction of Xian. I was also frustrated that when I took off, flying at full speed, I let the influence of the pony who’s magic I now carry take full effect and push me to pulling off something that only a hoofful of pegasi have ever been able to do. In doing that, I’d shot myself to the Facility way ahead of Fruity who had tried to talk me down mid-flight. I’m so stupid; not only did he try to talk me down, he also had the very weapon we had spent the day trudging around Rust-Bucket City for, and without it we didn’t have our advantage. To top things off, Nexus saw the sense to get the help of the same alicorns that got us to the ship to teleport himself here, just to stop me from doing something stupid, and if he wasn’t here to stop me, I would have gotten myself killed along with Xian. I owed him dearly.

“H-how long do you think it will take him to get here?” I tentatively asked my robotic friend.

“If we calculate how fast he flies in general, he’ll be flying at average pegasi top speeds the whole way. I estimate he would arrive in an hour, two at the most,” Nexus replied after a brief pause.

“AN HOUR!” I cried, not at all happy to wait that long.

“You did get here over the speed of sound. You covered the distance in minutes,” Nexus said flatly.

I opened my mouth to retort, but then closed it and looked down in shame. Not only that, I was still feeling tired since my energy levels were low after that intense flight. I whimpered pitifully and lay down. At that moment, I took notice of my HUD, especially my power readings. My Secondary Mana-Core was depleted, and my Primary Mana-Core was now down to thirty-eight percent and slowly dropping.

“I-um, I’m losing power,” I muttered. “Do you um, perhaps have anything that could help recharge me?”

“Sure, here.” Nexus used his nano-fibre tail to reach into his armour and pull out a small pouch to which he then placed on the floor before me.

I gently prodded the small fabric bag with my hoof and felt multiple small hard objects inside. When I opened the pouch, I was surprised to see at least ten gemstones sitting inside it.

“Where did you get these?” I asked in surprise.

“In an abandoned house somewhere during the time I was tracking you. After what happened to me outside of Stable 16, I wanted to be sure I had adequate materials to restore my power as soon as possible,” Nexus explained. “But nothing like that occurred again, thankfully, and I have found some more along the way so I can spare those for you.”

“Thank you,” I smiled weakly.

“You are welcome. You’ll need to be as recharged as possible for when we go in there.”

I nodded and began to pop gem after gem into my mouth like they were small sweets. Each one was like a fruit-flavoured sugary gummie, almost like I was eating a packet of Fruit Pastels, all lovely and juicy and such. After that satisfying snack, I was surprised and pleased to see that the energy reserve for my Primary Mana-Core had risen to eighty-eight percent and I felt so much more energised.

“Can you spare a couple more? I’m almost fully charged,” I asked sheepishly.

He nodded and fished out another pouch to which I only ate five gems that restored me to full power. Once I was recharged, we spent the next hour pacing. Well, I paced; he just stood there to keep me from trying to make a break for the door, and tried to come up with a plan of action. Any plans we came up with, however, wouldn’t work all that well since Nexus’s memory of the facility had been erased, so he didn’t remember what was inside.

“Ma’am, I see him,” Nexus announced as he pointed an armoured hoof to the sky almost an hour and a half after I arrived.

I whirled around and looked up. My enhanced pegasus eyes were clearly able to see Fruity gliding down towards us, but he was wobbling in the air and his head was drooped like he exhausted.

“Oh no!” I gasped when I realised my coltfriend was going to smack right into the ground in his exhausted stated. I rushed forward to where he was going to land and stood on my hind legs, my wings extending out behind me as counterbalance for my upright posture. I braced my hind legs and opened my forelegs, ready to catch him. I raised an eyebrow when I realised that there was a black stetson in his mouth as he shifted his head to tuck it under his duster, and prepared his legs for his landing. He flared his wings to create drag to slow himself down, but he struggled to keep them locked with how weak they were. Finally we met, and despite how much he slowed himself down, he still came in too hot and crashed into my outstretched legs. I grunted as I toppled over onto my back while I wrapped my hooves around him to hold him steady while we slid across the dirt. With my heavy cybernetic weight, we stopped very quickly and I hugged him tightly.

“I’m so, so sorry Fruity,” I cried into his sweaty chest.

The tired pegasus took in deep breaths of air to refill his lungs with oxygen. “S-so you s-should, do you… have any idea, the shit I had to… deal with while chasing your… arse?”

“I’m sorry. I let my emotions get the better of me.” I helped him back to his hooves. The poor stallion was so exhausted that he was trembling just standing.

“Yeah well, first I nearly crash into the ground from your crazy Lightboom, then I get chased by a crackhead pegasus raider, and to top it off, your bloody hat smacks me in the face where I nearly fell into another death dive,” He grumbled before he began to cough. “Ugh, hey Bucket Head, don’t suppose you got any water on you?”

“Certainly, sir.” Nexus used his tail again to reach into his armour to pull out a cylindrical can and hoofed it over to Fruity, who weakly took it with his wing.

“The fuck is this?” Fruity asked as he eyed the can. “I asked for water, not a can of pop.”

“Oddly enough, sir, that is purified water,” Nexus revealed.

“You gotta be yanking ma chain here.” Fruity took a closer look at the can to which he could just about see the markings for Purified Water. “Since when did they put water in a can?”

“Canned water?” I asked just as surprised.

“The oddity of the water being in a tin can is why I picked it up. I thought it was interesting.”

“Yeah, very odd,” I agreed as Fruity bit the cap and pulled it off before he greedily chugged down the water.

“Damn, I needed that.” He sighed with satisfaction and then held the empty water can to Nexus. “Still want the can or should I chuck it?”

“Might as well dispose of it, sir. It no longer has any value to it now,” Nexus said with a hint of sadness.

“Fair enough.” The pegasus lobbed the water can behind him without a care.

“That’s littering. Couldn’t you have waited till we found a bin?” I groaned.

Fruity looked at me like I said something stupid. “Seriously, the world has been blown to shit and you are mithered about one little can?”

I blushed in embarrassment upon hearing that. I suppose he had a point there. My pre-war mindset on the way things are post-war might clash like they just did here on occasion.

“Anyway, now that we are all here, I think now is a good time to proceed to the Facility and rescue young Xian,” Our robot companion suggested.

My expression became serious and I nodded. “Yes. Fruity, are you up to this?”

The pegasus nodded. “Yeah, that water did the trick. My heart’s still hammering like a jackhammer but I’m ready to put an end to this.”

I nodded, and after meeting the gaze of all of my friends, we turned for the door and began to approach.

“Ma’am, Sir, I will focus on finding and rescuing Xian, I can feel the power signature of Unit-3 below. She will most likely be guarded by that machine. You two can visit the Colonel. Keep him talking or distract him in some manner long enough for me to get her out,” Nexus said as he detailed his plan.

Now that Fruity was with us, such a plan could work as I wouldn’t be alone and Fruity had possession of the Pulse Wave Emitter.

“Sir, be prepared to use the Pulse Wave Emitter,” Nexus added after a moment’s pause.

The pegasus nodded as he lifted his right wing to reveal the weapon holstered on his belt. “Fun fact: this weapon works well on normal ponies like a taser.”

The doorway to the facility in the hill was fairly large, and the metal door itself was quite big itself in both size and thickness. I suppose it had to be if it was supposed to withstand a mega-spell detonation.

As we passed the threshold, we noticed a security camera by the doorframe and Fruity gave it a rude wing gesture, which was the back of the wing facing the camera and most of the primary feathers on the leading edge curled down apart from one. I’ve seen pegasi youths use this gesture to say like “Fuck you” or “Up yours”.

“Rude,” I chastise.

“What, the twat deserves it.”

“Please don’t use such language around Xian when we get her out of here.”

“I agree with Ma’am. It would not be healthy for her development,” Nexus added.

Fruity groaned as he slapped his wing against his forehead.

The corridor beyond the door was shrouded in shadow as the lights were out, which made it hard to see what lay ahead. As we pushed deeper into the corridor, we were jolted by a sudden one-tone alarm before we were alerted to movement behind us. The huge steel door began to close with creaks and groans.

“Wait, wait no!” I cried, but regardless, the large door closed and cast us all into pitch black darkness, and the only sound we could here then was the numerous thuds as its locking rams sealed the door.

“This has to be all part of his plan,” I whined.

Suddenly, a series of lights above us turned on that lit up the corridor up to a corner that branched off to the right as if on cue.

“I guess we go that way,” Fruity said with a defensive growl.

I nodded as we began to slowly and cautiously make our way up the lit corridor. The walls were bare, and every so often there would be columns or pipes that went from the floor to the ceiling that were also littered with ducts and cables. We would notice that one or two of these columns would be broken with cut wires stuck out of them. This must be the sabotage caused by Dr Pear.

“Multiple electrical cables and system links have been cut. Eighty percent of the facility’s remote functionality has been severed,” Nexus revealed.

“So the crazy git doesn’t have control of most of this place?” Fruity asked.

“So it would seem, but he has control of what is important.”

We turned the corner and more lights flickered on, while the lights from behind us went out. It was clear we were being led somewhere that he wanted us to go to. The lights quickly turned left to go back up again, but there was a corridor beyond the lit path.

“Utility Access,” Nexus said as he looked into the darkness.

“Excuse me?” I asked and turned back to him.

“I can see a sign above a door in the darkness there that reads “Utility Access”. I can use that to make my way down through the maintenance access routes to where Xian is being held.” He began to approach the shadowed area.

“Are you going to be ok by yourself?” I asked in concern for my robotic friend.

“Yeah, there will be no back up in there, mate,” Fruity added, showing concern for the Infiltrator.

Nexus gave us a nod before he disappeared into the shadows, and the sound of a door being opened and closed was the last sound we heard of our friend before we were left alone together.

“Well, let’s get a move on. I think you’re late for your appointment with the colonel,” Fruity joked.

I nodded. “Let’s.”

We continued to follow the concrete corridor in the direction the lights were directing us. Mostly it was a single route, but there were a couple of junctions along the way. The last straight stretch of the corridor had the most vandalism as nearly all of the cable ducts were broken and slashed on the walls. There were even a few doors along the corridor that led us to the control room, but they were all closed or locked so we were left with no other option but to go for the door at the very end that the lights indicated. As we approached, the steel door to the control room it slid up by itself into the frame to reveal a dark and ominous room.

“I guess we’re expected. Um, ladies first,” Fruity gestured with his hoof.

The room beyond the door was pitch black.

“If someone comes out and jumps me, I’m gonna smack you so hard,” I whined.

“Don’t worry, I’m right behind you.”

“My saviour,” I said sarcastically with a roll of my eyes as I slowly inched into the dark room. I would have had my shotgun or revolver out, but considering we would likely be fighting machines like Nexus they wouldn’t be very effective, so I didn’t draw my weapons. My enhanced vision was able to pick out a large computer bank against the back wall of the room with an enormous monitor that practically covered the wall above it, but before I could take in anymore details, I was blinded when the lights in the room came on.

“Gah!” I cried as the sudden flash of light took me by surprise.

“I’m blind, I can’t see!” Fruity whined before he walked into my plot. “Oof!”

“Welcome I-01. I am Colonel Ironside and we’ve been expecting you,” A deep male voice greeted us.

Once my eyes adjusted to the light, I looked up to see that the huge monitor was now active, and on the screen was a large wireframe pony face. The screen was black, but the wireframe model of the face was red with glowing yellow pupils in the eyes. The shape of the face was clearly that of an earth pony stallion.

“Wait ,we?!” I asked in alarm. At that moment, there were two loud clangs from behind us. Fruity and I whirled around to the door we came in by and gasped as an Infiltrator far larger than the ones we’ve faced in the past stood in the doorway, completely blocking it with its large but slender frame and outstretched bony-like wings. We had to crane our necks back to see its head as at our eye level we could only see its reinforced chest plate. The machine had long, slender legs and neck, and its skeletal-like head was topped off with a long slim antenna-like horn with a rainbow-hued jewel of some sort. The large machine tilted its head down so it could look directly at us, then suddenly, lights flared to life on its forehead and on the top of its head before a cascade of energy flowed down from its head and around its neck. The energy formed a flowing, if glitchy, mane that resembled something akin to what Princess Celestia once had but entirely in red. As we stared up at it fearfully, I noticed on its left eyebrow plate the etching: “U-1000”.

“Dear sweet Luna!” Fruity gasped as he took a couple steps back, clearly intimidated by the large robot. “It’s fucking huge!”

I gulped in fear now that the machine had us trapped. While I stared up at the large alicorn-like robot, the voice of the pony I possess the magic of spoke up.

Don’t you have something important to do other than stare at something superior to you?”

“Xian!”

I turned back to face the monitor and gulped down my anxiety of the machine behind me, I then stepped forward and flared out my wings to look as intimidating as possible.

“Where is my daughter?” I demanded.

Fruity turned to face the monitor as my demand got his attention.

“Daughter? That little zebra foal? You consider that thing to be your daughter?” The face shifted to look right at me on the screen while it spoke in a disgusted tone.

“Of course I do. She’s just a sweet innocent little filly, she doesn’t deserve to be a part of this mess,” I growled.

“Yeah, what sort of a monster uses kids like this?” Fruity asked.

“You deluded fools. That foal doesn’t deserve your kindness nor your love. She is part of the race that caused Equestria to burn and thus must be eradicated.”

I flapped my wings in aggravation. “Don’t you dare lay a hoof on her.”

The wireframe face twisted in a sickening smirk. “As we speak, Unit-03 should be crushing her little skull.”

“Everything has gone according to plan.” Unit-1000 spoke in a hauntingly soft and motherly tone that was reminiscent to Princess Celestia.

“We’ve been had hook, line, and sinker,” Fruity groaned.

“W-we can’t give up yet. Nexus might have gotten to her first,” I said with hope.

“Ah yes, the rogue element,” Ironside said with a smug tone of voice. “Even if it did intervene and stop Unit-03, the primary purpose of the foal being here has accomplished its goal.” The Colonel’s wireframe face grinned triumphantly. “You are right where I want you.”

Well two could play at this game.

“Yeah, well we knew you planned for this so we prepared a countermeasure.” I turned to Fruity and nodded. The pegasus put on a cocky smile and lifted his wing to reveal the Pulse Wave Emitter. The wireframe pony’s eyes widened considerably as he took notice of the sci-fi looking weapon.

“The Pulse Wave Emitter. Where did you get that?” He asked with a hint of worry in his voice.

“Never mind that, you fuck face,” Fruity said as he reached under his wing to grab the weapon with his mouth.

“Kill him,” The Colonel ordered.

My eyes widened in alarm as the huge machine lurched forward to attack.

“Fruity, watch out!”

The pegasus dove forward toward the computer system to avoid a hoof swipe from the robot’s long slender leg. He righted himself and spun around to face the massive machine as it approached. Fruity lifted his head and loosely aimed the weapon for the machine and fired. I cringed and moved back as I could feel the electro-magnetic wave as the weapon discarded its donut of energy. It was odd that Unit-1000 didn’t make an attempt to dodge it nor for Ironside to show any concern for his machine, so I began to suspect something was up. The donut of energy hit the alicorn robot and the whole machine was then enveloped in an electro-magnetic pulse for a second or two before it faded, and when it did all of the robots lights flickered on and off before they faded off and its holographic mane and tail fizzled out.

“Hah, eat that bitch!” Fruity cheered.

As I stared at the seemingly deactivated robot, I couldn’t help but get the sense that something was wrong. When I looked at the large monitor and saw the bemused expression, I instantly knew it wasn’t over.

“Alright, that’s enough playing around,” Ironside sighed.

And just like that, the machine sprung back to life and it looked at the completely gobsmacked pegasus. If the machine had flesh, it would likely have given him a cheeky smile as it spoke in a playful tone. “Gotcha.”

I noticed Ironside raise an eyebrow at the robot’s behaviour but he didn’t say anything more.

I shot across the room with a burst of speed from my wings when I saw the robot raise a foreleg again to strike at my coltfriend, who was frozen in shock. I shoulder-barged him out of the way, which made him yelp in surprise and drop the Pulse Wave Emitter. I then cried out in agony when the machine’s hoof swung down and connected solidly with my armour-padded shoulder. It felt like somepony had smacked me as hard as they could with a hoofball bat.

“Shit, are you alright?” Fruity asked in concern as he rushed over to me while I picked myself back up. “Dude, it totally bent your shoulder guard in.”

“Argh! Yeah, I can feel it,” I groaned as I stood up. The bent metal rubbed against my shoulder as I moved. I looked at the dented armour and cringed. If Unit-1000 was able to do that to a piece of military-grade combat armour, I dreaded to think of what it could have done to Fruity and his entirely organic and unarmoured body if it hit him instead. I realised then and there that this was way too dangerous for my coltfriend. His body was way too fragile and he could easily be severely injured or worse from just a single blow from this robot.

“We need to come up with a plan and fast,” Fruity whispered.

I nodded and turned to him before giving him a loving nuzzle to the cheek. “Please go. Go help Nexus.”

“Wait, what?!” Fruit gaped at me. “That’s not a plan!”

“Please, Fruity, just go!” I pleaded, my eyes wide with worry.

He stared back and his expression saddened in realisation. “Alright, w-we’ll come back for you as soon as we can.” He kissed me on the cheek before he flapped his wings hard to propel himself towards the open door. Unit-1000 didn’t make a move to stop him, despite being ordered to kill him. Both it and Ironside knew who the real target was and I was now alone.

“You have only bought him a few more minutes, I-01. His time will come,” Ironside said with a cruel smile.

I noticed the Emitter was within reach of my tail and got an idea to quickly end him. I just needed to keep him distracted. “Why are you doing this?” I demanded.

“Why? Originally it was to stop the war from ending the way it did, to keep the country from making things worse; while also stopping the enemy from gaining strength through internal collapse of their infrastructure, and to prevent further wars from ever occurring.” Colonel Ironside explained firmly. His gaze shifted to Unit-1000 for a moment before settling back on me. “However, after the bombs fell and the world fell apart, and after I was awoken when I was alerted to your presence, I’ve learned that the world has fallen into complete disarray without a Princess to rule or to bring order back to the nation. I now plan to bring back the world of old, establish a monarchy with a princess, and use my Infiltrators to ensure order is maintained so Equestria will know a peace that hasn’t been seen for nearly two centuries.”

I could tell he had good intentions, but the way he was going about things was not ethical and against equine rights. I twitched as I felt my nano-fibre tail wrap around the mouth grip of the Emitter. I had to keep my face straight so I didn’t give them any indication I was doing something. “W-why are you after me?”

Unit-1000 loomed over me; its slightly larger head came down to be at eye level with me. “You possess something that is required for our completion so we can fulfil our destinies.” It spoke in that same unnervingly sweet voice.

“The binding spell?” I asked, although I already knew this from what Dr Pear had told us.

“Correct… How did you know about that?” The Colonel asked.

Crap, busted. I quickly pulled up the Emitter wrapped in my tail and aimed it at the large computer system that held the Colonel. His eyes widened in alarm and anger.

“Kill her!”

I fired a blast right into the computer terminal, and in the process, dropped the weapon from the EM feedback I felt. I watched as the computer sparked and crackled and the face on the monitor shook violently like he was in great pain, before disappearing from the screen as the computer went dark with a final scream.

“Haha! Eat dirt, asshole!” I yelled in triumph. However, I had completely forgot about the large robot next to me at that moment, and instantly regretted it as it smacked me again with its foreleg in the chest. The hit was so hard and strong it was enough to lift me off my hooves, and throw me across the room and into a large doorway. I landed with a heavy thud and scraped across the metal floor until I crashed into a large red blast door.

“Argh!!!” I cried in agony. My chest armour was also now dented in, and I could feel a slight dampness in my coat under my armour. I groaned as I struggled to my hooves and wasted no time in pulling off the damaged armour sections. I sighed in relief when the damaged sections no longer pressed down against my hurt limb and chest, but I cringed as I looked down at my now armourless chest to see a red splotch on my Noir Coat. The hit against my armour piece dented it enough that it broke the skin below it.

“Y-you can’t k-kill me. You n-need me,” I grunted out in pain.

“We can kill you, for you are within the Facility where we do not need you to be alive. All we need is a sample of your flesh to analyse.” Colonel Ironside’s voice reverberated around the room from a speaker in the corner. Of course he wouldn’t be dead. Like a computer, he could have easily have copied himself to somewhere else.

The large robot began to advance, its bony wings extending out to make itself look even bigger as it approached the blast door. I felt what little bravado I had left drain away after I heard what Ironside said. As I stared up at the huge machine, I then realised it wasn’t going to hold back enough so that I’d live through this. It was going to kill me. I began to panic as it approached the blast door’s archway. I had to escape somehow, so I began to frantically look around and quickly stumbled onto the door’s control panel. Without thinking, I pressed the door release button, and with a loud chime, the huge red door began to open.

The machine stood before me as the door slowly opened. I shivered in fear and began to dodge hoof punches as she threw them at me, dodging left, dodging right, and ducking to avoid her hooves. She was lightning fast, and if it wasn’t for my threat indicator, she would be all over me and I’d be a pile of mush on the floor. I grunted when the sharp edge of her forehoof grazed my cheek and left a cut along it, before I was startled by a loud thud and clang as the blast door settled into the ground and ceiling. That momentary lapse in concentration cost me as I suddenly felt excruciating pain in my chest like I had been shot. When I looked down, I could see that Unit-1000 had hit me with a precision strike with the tip of her hoof to my regeneration talisman, if the “Catastrophic System Failure” and “Regen-System Offline” warnings I was now receiving were any indication. I gasped in agony and staggered back through the open door, and into a cavernous chamber shrouded in a red-hued light. I brought a hoof up to my now bleeding chest. When I pulled my hoof away, it was coated in the blood that coursed through my flesh, and there were tiny specs of a pink gem as well.

“Oh I’m sorry. Did I break something important?” The machine taunted in Celestia’s voice.

I staggered backwards until my rump pressed against the guard rail of the catwalk I stood on. Despite my pain, I found myself gaping at what I saw that surrounded me. In every direction I looked, I saw catwalks and storage pods that all had glowing red lights on them. In the pods that were closest to me, I was able to see that the red light was an indicator to show that the robots within were on standby, which meant they could be activated at any moment. It was a horrifying sight to behold and it drove home just how real the possibility of Colonel Ironside’s plan was. Beside the entryway on the right, I could see four pods that were open.

“Four!” I gasped. I knew Dr Pear and Nexus didn’t have pods as Dr Pear built herself and him. We got chased across Equestria by Units 1 and 2, and the third pod was for the other one that was sent to hunt us down but ended up foalnapping Xian to lure us here instead, so where is Unit-4?

I felt searing pain along the side of my head as Unit-1000 hit me again. I was too fixated on the fourth pod to notice her approach or the flashing exclamation mark to realise there was a threat. I threw my hoof up to my right cheek and cried out in alarm when I felt a huge chunk of my flesh had been ripped away by the hit, and that I could feel that there was a hole into my mouth through my cheek again. I needed to get away, but with how close she was I wouldn’t be able to get far. Unfortunately, my only option was to attempt to fight back. I knew I was outclassed in every way, but I had to try.

Unit-1000 swung a hoof down hard to try and pierce my skull. I reacted to my threat warning as soon as it appeared on my HUD, and I side-stepped to avoid the impact. The sharp metal hoof pierced the metal catwalk like it was paper. This was my chance. I reared up onto my hind legs to give me some height and put all my strength into a punch of my own aimed for her face. However, the large machine simply moved its long slender neck back to avoid my punch, and since I was balanced on two legs, I lost my balance when my hoof hit nothing but air. I squeaked as I felt my centre of gravity shift, but just when I was about to fall, I stopped. I felt pressure on my other foreleg, and when I looked, Unit-1000 held it with her free foreleg as she sat on her haunches. I looked up into those glowing red robot eyes in fear as she held me up. I flapped my wings and pulled to try and free myself, but she just tightened her vice-like grip, making me cringe in pain from the pressure.

“Time to end this,” It said with an almost sad tone as it yanked her other leg free from the floor and raised it.

“No, no!” I cried as I thrashed about.

It threw its hoof forward, aimed for my chest again, likely to stop my heart. I screamed and pulled as hard as I could backwards. I felt a slight shift, but my senses were once again abused with a sharp pain as her hoof dug into my abdomen and deep into my stomach and continued down until it ripped out through the bottom of my crotch between my legs. The pain was unimaginable. Tears streaked down my cheeks as my nerves screamed for the abuse to stop.

“Oh dear, now look at what you made me do,” Unit-1000 sighed as it let go of me. “You made me make a mess.”

When the machine let go of me, I was too distracted by my pain to pay attention to what I was doing as my immediate thought was to get away, and that involved taking a step back. My hind legs and my rump hit the guard rail, and since I was still on my hind legs, I quickly lost my balance and toppled backwards over the railing, falling down into the cavernous chamber.

XXXXX

Unit-1000 stood up slowly after it watched the injured cyber-mare fall over the guard rail and plummet. It felt a little bad for the damage it caused the mare, but it was under orders after all and they had to be followed. It approached the railing just in time to see the mare open her wings and glide across to the opposite side, while avoiding the central column of the Vault and in between a row of containment capsules about a third of the way down.

“So she wants to prolong her suffering. Such a shame.”

“Having problems, Unit-1000?” Colonel Ironside asked as his voice was projected from the body of Unit-4, the machine walking in through the open door behind the alicorn robot shortly after I-01 fell.

“Negative, sir,” Unit-1000 said as it turned to face the smaller machine. “Just giving her a sporting chance. I have acquired a sizable sample for you. ” The large machine gestured to the mound of bloody meat beside her before it turned and headed for a narrow staircase to the lower levels of the Mark 2 Vault.

The smaller machine turned its gaze away from Unit-1000, and instead looked down at a large pile of gore on the catwalk floor.

“Excellent. Retrieve it at once, we only have a few minutes before the flesh dies and the spell inside it becomes useless,” Colonel Ironside ordered.

“Acknowledged,” The robot said in an emotionless monotone before it approached the slab of meat that had once been I-01’s underbelly and crotch. Once the dripping piece of flesh had been acquired, the robot turned around and began to rush back towards the control room and the elevator beside the entrance, so it could go down to the labs.

XXXXX

Fruity retraced his steps back down the main corridor until he came to the junction where Nexus had left the group to begin his search for Xian by entering the Utility Section. Upon entering, he found that it led to a stairway that took him down deeper into the Facility, with several tunnels that branched out to several different departments. However, recently disturbed dust on the floor revealed to him the direction that the robot had taken, so the pegasus followed it until he came to the Residential Quarters. He finally found Nexus inside one of the old living quarters deep inside the residential area. He was lured by the sounds of an argument, and was stunned to find Nexus standing protectively in front of Xian on a couch across from a pink unicorn mare who sat on her haunches, looking like she was having a severe migraine. She shook her head and cried, not with pain but with fear and effort; when she opened her eyes, her blue irises flashed red while she held her head with her forehooves.

“You can fight this Pixie. You do not have to do what they tell you,” Nexus told her. “Do you really want to harm a foal?”

“Argh, n-no, I-I don’t, ughh.” She growled and closed her eyes. When she opened them, her eyes were red again. “Neural interference intensifying. Remote body control not responding,” Unit-3’s emotionless voice said as it stated its situation.

“What the hell is going on here?” Fruity asked as he flew across the room to stand beside Nexus and put himself between the enemy machine and his adoptive daughter.

“Pixie Lulamoon here has evolved enough that she has acquired a sense of self, able to think and act on her own. However, the internal programming that forces us-well the baseline Mark 2 units, to obey any order is trying to get her to act against her will,” Nexus explained quickly.

“Well don’t just stand there, do something!” Fruity urged as he draped a wing over the shivering and whimpering little filly.

“I-I know I took, uhhh, the original Pixie’s memories, hmmm, but I feel like I am her now, argh, her wants, her desires.” The machine looked up, her gaze settled on Xian. “I want to entertain ponies, foals especially, ARGH! Hmmm, make them laugh, make them happy, I-I can’t hurt, I WON’T hurt a foal!” She declared while she fought to keep her self-control.

“I believe you,” Nexus said as he approached. “I can help, but you will have to keep still.”

“Are you bonkers lad? This could be a ploy to get us to let our guard down!” Fruity shouted.

Suddenly, Pixie gasped and looked at Nexus with clear eyes. “I-I don’t feel it trying to take control. Wait…” She closed her eyes in concentration. “I don’t sense Colonel Ironside in the System anymore. Am I free?”

“Crystal!” Fruity said in realisation.

“For the moment. The main computer may have been disabled, but I fear he would have a backup and it will only be a matter of time before he re-establishes himself. We don’t have long so please, hold still while I prevent you from being able to taken by them again.”

“O-ok. T-thank you so much.” Pixie sat and locked her limbs to keep herself stock still.

“I hope you know what you are doing, Tin Can.”

“Don’t worry, sir. I’ve disabled mine, and I know where it is, so it’ll be an easy fix,” Nexus replied as he turned around so he could extend his nano-fibre tail out. He stared at Pixie’s head as his nano-fibres began to snake around her head, phasing through her illusion spell and finding their way through any gap or space in the metal skull. The fibres dug their way deeper and deeper into her head. The robot mare, who was able to feel them, fought hard to keep still as they pushed into the core of her head.

“What are you searching for?” Fruity asked as he shielded Xian’s eyes from what would have been a horrific execution of a living thing if Pixie was a live pony.

“Her signal transmitter, sir.” Just as Nexus said that, he raised his head as his nano-fibres found their target. “I have it.” And with that, he made his nano-fibres encapsulate the transmitter, and with the right application of force, tore it from the circuit.

Pixie gasped. “Ah! M-my Signal Transmitter just went offline.”

Nexus then began to withdraw his tail, the tiny device having been ripped apart further by the fibres that held it. This was done so it could be extracted from her body but it wouldn’t just be left in there to eventually be repaired.

“You are free now. No longer under anypony’s control,” Nexus told her as he threw the remains of her signal transmitter away.

The robotic mare stood up and tackle-hugged Nexus, the illusion shedding tears of joy. “Oh thank you, thank you, thank you! I would have hated myself for the rest of my life if I was made to hurt a foal.”

After the release of Unit-3, Pixie Lulamoon, Fruity and Nexus took several minutes to debate on what to do next, before the intercom speaker in the corner of the room suddenly crackled to life and the voice of Colonel Ironside filled the room.

“Unit-3, for whatever reason I cannot detect you, but that is not important. Report to the Research Lab immediately. I’m sure you have taken care of our little unwanted guest. It is time to complete Project Infiltrator.”

Fruity looked to the speaker wide-eyed. “Wait, complete? Does that mean…”

“He has acquired a sample of Crystal’s flesh,” Nexus said grimly.

“Oh, fuck no.”

“Ok, Fruity, Pixie, take Xian to the MASA HQ. Oxanna will be waiting for us there. You’ll be safe there until I can get Ma’am out.”

“Oh no you don’t, you Smart-Alec metal git! Crystal is mine, and I don’t trust this metal bitch for a second. You take Xian and this… thing to the MASA and wait for us.”

“You would be willing to fight against Unit-1000 despite being vastly inferior?”

“The fuck is that supposed to mean? Don’t be a smartarse with me, I will do anything for Crystal.”

Nexus nodded and he used his tail to hand over his auto-shotgun to the pegasus. “I hope you don’t run into Unit-1000. It won’t be very effective, but a 12gauge might make it flinch. Good luck, sir.” He approached the couch. “Xian, your daddy is going to save your mum, and we are going to leave to a safe place.”

The young zebra filly looked up at the machine. “She’s not gonna try and hurt me, is she?” She asked quietly. Pixie winced at the filly’s question.

“No, she’s on our side now.”

“O-ok,” Xian climbed onto Nexus’s back as he crouched down for her. When he stood back up, the little filly looked to Fruity as he holstered the shotgun across his back.

“I love you, daddy. Please save mummy.”

Fruity approached the filly and nuzzled her cheek softly. “Shhh, don’t worry sweetie. Everything will be ok. I promise I’ll get mummy back.”

Nexus nodded, and with Xian on his back, he and Pixie left the room to begin their evacuation while Fruity stayed behind. He looked back at the shotgun before leaving the room and making his way back towards the control room to look for Crystal.

XXXXX

After I fell over the railing and plummeted about a third of the way down the cavernous chamber, I had managed to roll myself over and open my wings and glide across to the other side. I had to avoid a central column that seemed to extend all the way down to the bottom along with a couple of catwalks. I aimed myself for a row of the containment capsules, and at the last second closed my wings so I could slip through a gap and land behind them. However, I didn’t close my wings fast enough and my right wing clipped one of the pods, which caused a fracture alert to go off in my HUD. I breathed heavily in fear and panic, as well as great pain. I had at least a third of my flesh ripped off my body at this point, and right now all I could feel was a burning pain from where my body had been abused. My heart was also beating a mile a minute. If it wasn’t for the restricted blood flow to my flesh, I probably would have already bled to death by now, but I assumed I had a safety feature installed that would prevent me from bleeding out if I lost all my flesh, since the organs necessary for my survival were inside my endoskeleton.

“This hurts so much-argh… can’t think straight anymore,” I groaned painfully.

I grunted as I pushed myself between the containment pods, being sure to avoid the numerous cables that poked out of the backs and sides. I crouched to be as low as I could, and cringed when I heard a tearing sound. As I looked to my left, I saw that the sleeve of my bloodied coat had caught on a piece of metal that was sticking out from the pod beside me, and tore at my coat as I crouched.

“Aww, I really liked this coat.” I used my tail to unhook the torn sleeve while I crouch-walked to the front of the pods so I could look out into the cavernous chamber. The chamber was enormous and cylindrical in shape. I didn’t know how far down it went, but I estimated from top to bottom it must’ve been something around five hundred feet or more. It was stupidly huge. I had no idea how Colonel Ironside was able to get this place built without anypony taking any notice, but he somehow got it done and also hid… I did a double take as I looked around, looking up and then down at ALL of the blinking red lights that were lit on the containment pods. There were hundreds of them. Dr Pear wasn’t kidding. He literally had an army of these robots down here. If he was able to activate them all at once, control and co-ordinate them, Equestria as it is now would fall to his control. The very idea of being ruled by machines like this, who could eventually look like your best friend, was a deeply horrifying thought.

While I continued to stare out into the huge vault, I caught movement to my right on the other side of the chamber, and saw the large alicorn-like robot descend from the upper platform by some stairs. I had to stay away from that thing, maybe get around it, work my way back up and lock it in the vault while it was down here looking for me. With a plan in mind, I skulked back behind the pods, tearing more of my coat (this time along the side which exposed my striped side), and began to creep around slowly towards the stairs on the opposite side.

“It was so dumb of me to even try to fight that thing. It’s a bloody alicorn model for crying out loud, of course it’ll kick my ass,” I whined quietly to myself while the pain grew as the broken and torn flesh was aggravated by my crouched movement.

I dashed across a gap between two sets of pods while supressing a cry of pain, and then froze when I heard a voice drift over to me from where I landed after I fell.

“Crystal? Crystal where are you?” The voice of Fruity called to me in worry.

“Fruity, no no, NO!” I cried in fear.

“I came back to help, where are you?” He called out.

I jumped out from the pods in a panic and smacked into the metal chest of Unit-1000. I fell onto my rump with a thud and screamed in alarm as the huge machine loomed over me. Again, if it had flesh I bet it would have been smirking at me.

“Oh I’m sorry. Were you looking for somepony?” It asked in a perfect imitation of Fruity’s voice.

My jaw dropped as I realised the machine used his voice to lure me out. “H-how?” I squeaked.

“Oh it was simple, really. I heard him speak back up in the control room. It was easy enough to record and calibrate his voice for my own use,” The machine explained again in that motherly tone as it lowered its slender neck so it could put its skull-like head level with mine. “Well this has been, hmm, a questionable experience, but there is no pleasure in torturing you any longer.”

My eyes widened at what that meant: she was going to finish it. I extended my wings and quickly jumped to the side, to jump over the railing to fly across to the other side. However, just as I jumped I felt a powerful and heavy smack to my right side, my damaged wing, and screamed.

WARNING! CATASTROPHIC FAILURE!”

The fractured metal wing bone shattered upon being struck, and since I was mid-jump I immediately began to fall down into the depths of the vault. I tried to flap my wings on instinct, but all it did was cause severe pain as the dead weight of my broken wing, now just a piece of lightweight metal and flesh, tore off my body from the wind resistance. This left me tumbling with only one wing.

As I fell, I was incapable of controlling my descent as my only remaining wing caused problems with stability, for in my state of panic, I was flapping it about. I reached out for any catwalk or platform that came into view to try and grab on to, only to crash into it or bounce off. In case of catwalks, I would smash right through them if I landed directly on them. I was so overwhelmed by pain that my pain receptor in my electronic brain shut itself down. It was a welcome relief to stop feeling the pain, but also a chilling reminder of how much of me was machine. The fall and the crashing against platforms and catwalks ripped away all but my right sleeve of my coat since I still had the shoulder guard for my right shoulder still fastened on, but the rest was now long gone. My flesh took some heavy damage as well, with plenty of deep cuts and scrapes from the hits as I fell. If it wasn’t for the fact that there were regular platforms and catwalks going all the way down from each level, falling from where I did to the bottom would have killed me. With the bottom in sight, a huge thick pipe came into view after I crashed through another catwalk, and by this point, my other wing had been broken and ripped off. I was grateful I couldn’t feel it because I would surely be paralysed by the pain. Like the rest of my fall, I slammed into the pipe hard.

WARNING! MULTIPLE STRUCTURAL STRESS ALERTS DETECTED!”

WARNING! VISUAL SESORY SYSTEM COMPROMISED!”

I lifted my head with a groan. The vision from my right eye was fuzzy and flickered badly. When I looked down at the pipe I laid on, I realised why. When I landed on it, my head had been flung forward hard against the pipe and the right side of my face had heavily impacted onto a large rivet. The gooey mess on the rivet told me it popped my organic eye and likely damaged my upgraded optical unit beneath.

“Uhhh, it can’t get any worse than this,” I whined, to which the pipe began to hiss, and although I couldn’t feel pain, I could still feel changes in temperature, and holy Celestia was it getting cold all of a sudden. With a quick glance to my ruined belly, I saw a growing spider web crack that was quickly getting coated in frost. As I didn’t want to get frozen to the pipe, I grunted and pushed myself off and fell another twenty feet and landed hard on my left hind leg and flank, crushing the leg.

WARNING! LEFT HIND LEG COMPROMISED!”

A diagram of my hind leg appeared in my HUD and displayed multiple areas that had been damaged from my fall. All of the joints had seized up to prevent it from moving and worsening it as some of the damage was also structural. I grunted tiredly as I lay on the floor, panting for breath while I tried to figure out what to do next. I had to escape, but that was going to prove difficult with only three working legs and no wings. In the state I was in, I was in no shape whatsoever to even think about taking on Unit-1000 or trying to avoid it, but I had to try. I didn’t want to die down here and I couldn’t leave Xian without a mother. With a grunt of effort, I began to crawl for the stairs I could see in front of me, just as I began to hear the sound of dripping water.

I had managed to drag myself about ten feet, which took me several minutes in my damaged state, before the large machine with its flowing red, holographic yet glitchy mane came down the stairs and began to approach me. I cried out weakly and tried to crawl away backwards. The dripping had become a steady trickle by the time I pulled myself back to where I had landed, and the machine had stalked its way upon me again.

“Go away!” I cried pathetically as I continued to try and pull myself away.

I made it another foot before I felt a tingle go up my spine, and then found I couldn’t move. I looked down along my belly with its deep bloody gouge to see that Unit-1000 had stood on my tail to hold me in place.

“I’m sorry I-01… no, Crystal, but this ends here.” The machine spoke in an apologetic voice. It was surprising to me that it decided to call me by my name rather than my Infiltrator number. It shifted its frame for better stability on its three slender legs and raised its other forehoof ready to for an attack. The shift in its stance put it under the trickle of water, and after a couple of seconds, it shuddered and looked up.

“What’s this?” She asked out loud in mild surprise.

While it was distracted, I reached over to my tail, grabbed it and began to tug on it to try and free myself from its hoof.

Warning! Extreme negative temperature detected!” A male electronic voice sounded from the large machine.

As soon as the warning sounded, there was a sudden crunch and the sound of shattering glass before a cascade of liquid began to pour itself down upon Unit-1000 in a large torrent. Unit-1000 reared up in surprise as it was bathed in some freezing cold liquid, and I used this as my opportunity to escape and crawled away as fast as I could. The machine was so surprised and confused by the sudden deluge of liquid, it didn’t react to my escape for a good minute, and by then a large puddle had formed on the floor, and ice and frost had begun to coat the robot.

When I saw how the machine was beginning to be coated in frost and ice due to the liquid that no doubt came from the pipe I landed on, I suddenly realised what the liquid was.

“Liquid Nitrogen!” I squeaked as a bad feeling washed over me.

The machine managed to regain its bearings as its gaze locked onto me again and begun to trudge through the growing pool of liquid nitrogen towards me. However, as it stomped through the growing lake its movements began to slow and the lights in its eyes, body, and holographic mane and tail began to flicker as more ice and frost built up.

I reached the stairs and collapsed against the bottom step, huffing and puffing in exhaustion. The way the cavern floor was shaped prevented the liquid nitrogen from spreading any closer to me, but the towering machine was still getting closer. It raised an ice-coated foreleg and reached for me slowly. I cringed as the sharp hoof tip scratched deeply across my left eye, narrowly avoiding my eye, before it stopped after it pulled away from my cheek. I gasped in surprise when I saw its flickering mane and eyes go dark as Unit-1000 shutdown.

I flopped back in relief and cried tears of joy. While I enjoyed my momentary reprieve, I was spurred back into action when a new alert from the Facility sounded.

WARNING! INSUFFICIENT REACTOR COOLANT DETECTED!”

“Oh, that can’t be good,” I gasped as I began to try and struggle onto three legs.

I grit my teeth in concentration as I turned away from the frozen Unit-1000 and hauled myself onto my three working legs. I bit my lip to stop myself from moaning as they took my weight. My HUD flashed with multiple stress alerts as I begun to slowly waddle my way up the stairs. My progress was slow since I had to compensate for a lack of balance and stability without my left hindleg.

I panted and groaned with discomfort as I reached the top of the stairs, bringing me to the first sublevel of the storage vault. I looked up and I swear my face must have paled at the distance I would need to cover to reach to the top where the door to the exit was. I could barely see the ceiling. It was that far up. With how damaged I currently was, this was going to take a long, long time. I had a whole new respect for ponies that walked about and lived with three legs. They really did overcome a challenge.

WARNING! INSUFFICIENT REACTOR COOLANT… CORE TEMPERATURE RISING… MELTDOWN IMMINENT!”

“Oh no!” I gaped in horror at the alert and began to push my stressed limbs harder.

REPEAT, MELTDOWN IMMINENT! PLEASE EVACUATE THE FACILITY!”

I hobbled along the catwalk as I searched for the next stairway, with worry and panic filling my heart. If I was scared of Unit-1000 killing me before, I was now even more afraid that I would not make it out of the facility by the time its reactor went critical and blew.

“Crystal, where the fuck are you?” I heard the voice of Fruity call out to me from above.

I paused and listened, straining to hear for any mechanical noises in the background or anything out of the ordinary. Unit-1000 got the jump on me before by using my colt-friend’s voice, so I wasn’t about to let it happen again.

“This isn’t funny Crys, we need to go!” Fruity yelled, sounding panicked.

That had to be him. So far, only Fruity had ever called me “Crys”, meaning there would be no way for the machines to know that name could be used as bait. I hobbled over to the railing that overlooked the core of the chamber and looked up, and to my great relief and confusion was Fruity. He was flying back and forth from platform to platform, catwalk to catwalk in search of me. I was happy he was here for me, but didn’t I tell him to help Nexus?

“Fruity, down here!” I shouted up to him with a wave of a foreleg. My voice came out more electronic and synthesised than my normal tone of voice; more proof of how damaged I was.

The pegasus immediately looked down and dove towards me. When he opened his wings and came to hover before me, his eyes widened in shock and horror at the state I was in.

“Holy Creator, what-what happened to you?!” He gasped in shock.

“I got my ass kicked, that’s what,” I groaned.

“There’s getting your ass kicked and absolutely fucking battered!”

“Uhh, please, no jokes, not now.”

“S-sorry…” He trailed off as he tilted his head to the side and then gasped. “Y-your wings are gone.”

“Can we talk about this after we get out of here, please?”

“Uh, yeah.” He landed beside me and helped to support me as we quickly, or as quickly as my damaged state would allow, began to make our way up.

“W-where is Nexus a-and Xian?” I asked the struggling pegasus as he pushed at my rump to help me up more stairs.

“Nexus has her, she’s safe. You don’t have to worry about her.”

It partially calmed my nerves to know our daughter was safe in the hooves of Nexus, so now I could focus on getting out of here without the fear of wondering if my foal was ok.

XXXXX

Several minutes after succumbing to the cold of the liquid nitrogen, the machine reactivated and shattered the ice that clung to its body. Unit-1000 quickly stepped forward while it looked around, its sensory system detecting a shift in the reactor’s behaviour and it wasn’t good.

“It is about time you woke up,” Colonel Ironside said with clear annoyance directly into the machine’s head. “The coolant to the reactor has been disrupted and the Spark Reactor is set to meltdown.”

The machine stood there, not knowing what to do at this point with the knowledge that its home and sleeping comrades were to be destroyed.

“Centuries of planning and preparation wasted.” Ironside growled angrily. “All that work, and for what, a good for nothing failure of an Infiltrator who’s only purpose to us was to give us the spell.” There was an audible sigh. “It can’t end just like that, so I’ve decided to upload the spell matrix for the Flesh Binding Spell into your memory core. I want you to continue my work, to fulfil your destiny as the new Princess of this world. I-01 and her companions no longer matter anymore, your survival is paramount. Escape the facility and live. Find Upgrade Station Alpha, it is the only place close that’ll be able to grant you the ability to graft flesh to your endoskeleton. I also have one last thing for you: Unit-4 has been released to your control, it will make a good companion to you. Now hurry.”

“Can you not upload yourself to Unit-4 and escape with me, sir?” Unit-1000 asked in concern for its creator.

“Sadly, I cannot. The device to upload myself was on the main computer, and it has been fried.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“Don’t be. You did your part and allowed me to get what I wanted. Everything had gone accordingly, but I couldn’t have foreseen when building this place that I would need better pipe placement for the reactor coolant.”

Unit-1000 bowed its head. “I will do my best for you sir. Thank you… thank you for giving me life.” It spoke with gratefulness and respect, before it turned and began to ascend.

XXXXX

By the time we made it to the ground floor, the whole Facility rumbled and quaked as the overheating reactor set off explosions deep within the Facility. During the climb to the top, I got the sensation of the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end like I was being watched again, but when I looked I couldn’t see anything, not even the glow of the red eyes from one of those machines. I chalked that up to just me being so damaged that my senses were screwed up. It took us half-an-hour to climb up to the top, and by then we were utterly exhausted, especially Fruity since he had been trying to support and push me the whole way.

“Ugh… just the… long ass… corridor… to go now,” Fruity panted as we began to make our way towards the vault’s exit.

“Won’t be long now,” I groaned, although I was still in a state of internal panic about the reactor about to have a meltdown.

“We should… hurry… the reactor can’t have… long left.”

I just nodded with a grim expression as I hobbled along. Surprisingly, just as we entered the control room a pink unicorn was picking herself up from the floor. She groaned as she looked off to a broken object on the floor by the far corner. It was the Pulse Wave Emitter, or what was left of it, as it was smashed beyond recognition.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Fruity demanded sternly.

“Huh?” I asked in surprise as I had not expected that reaction at all.

“S-sorry Mr Fruity, Nexus told me to come back and assist you and…” She trailed off when she looked at me, and her eyes widened in shock at my damaged state. “Oh my, um, and err, I-01-eek! I-I mean Crystal, but something set off some sort of EM trap and knocked me out for a spell.”

“What do you mean?” Fruity inquired.

“I dunno, I saw something when I walked in here, then there was a pop and a flash, and everything went dark.”

“I-01?!” I gasped as I looked at the unicorn. “Only these robots and that guy in the computers have called me that. Are you one of them?”

The unicorn wilted and looked like she was about to panic at the hard stare I gave her before Fruity stepped forward. “We don’t have time for this, we needed to get out of here ten minutes ago, Unit-03… um, Pixie was it?” Fruity asked before he resumed. “You can tell us what happened again in more detail later. You can support Crystal’s weight since you’re a robot like her. Carry her and let’s get the hell out of here before the reactor blows.”

“By our estimates, the reactor should have blown by now,” The robot said as she lowered herself onto her belly to let me climb onto her back.

“We better get out of here like now!” Fruity urged.

I climbed onto the disguised robot’s back and wrapped my forelegs around her neck for support but tighter than I really should. I suppose the anger I felt for what this robot did to us earlier, especially foalnapping Xian, was still having an effect on me.

“Let’s hurry to our rendezvous!” Fruity yelled, and with that Unit-03 stood up with little effort despite me on her back and galloped beside Fruity.

“Please ma’am, not so tight,” She whimpered as we hurriedly made our way towards the main door.

I grumbled but relented, instead tightly gripping her barrel when the Facility shook from another explosion from deep inside.

WARNING! MELTDOWN IMMINENT! PLEASE EVACUATE THE FACILITY!”

“Yes, we get it!” Fruity yelled as we rounded the final bend and then skidded to a stop as the door to the outside world was closed.

“I swear I didn’t touch it when I came in,” Unit-03 cried.

“Who… when did this close?” I cried in alarm.

Fruity rushed up to the control panel and began to mash the door release button, but no matter how many times he hit the button it didn’t respond, and the heavy steel and concrete door remained firmly in place.

“Oh, fuck this!” Fruited yelled in aggravation, pulled Nexus’s auto-shotgun off his back with his hooves and aimed the gun at the control panel.

“Fruity no!”

My cry fell on deaf ears as my coltfriend fired a blast of buckshot into the control panel and shredded it. The panel exploded in a shower of plastic, metal and sparks as it was totally destroyed by the spray of lead pellets.

To our great surprise the loud chime sounded, and the door began to slowly open. I felt relief wash over me now that we were not going to be locked in this tomb while it exploded and kill us all. Once the door was open enough we squeezed through the gap and ran.

“Run! Run like your life depends on it!” Fruity yelled as soon as we were all outside in the fresh air.

The ground quaked more violently than before and the machine carrying me didn’t waste another moment. It began to run as fast as it could while it carried me, and Fruity jumped into the air to fly alongside us. I watched Unit-03’s disguised face as she ran; her expression was in total panic, and it twisted and contorted to various levels of despair. It wasn’t until we reached the base of Meadowlark Hill that her expression showed utter horror, and she poured as much of her strength as she could into her legs to push her along faster.

“That’s it!” She screamed, and a moment later the entre hill shook as it was rocked by an earth-shattering explosion deep underground. The shockwave of the explosion was enough to blast loose dirt off rocks, uproot small desert trees and even crack some large rocks. I looked back and watched as a plume of fire and smoke began to shoot out of where the door to the facility was, creating a geyser of fire into the afternoon sky. Then, the whole hill began to rise.

“What the fuck!” I gaped in shock. I’ve never seen anything like what was taking place before me. Only in fiction have I read or seen something that had come close.

We stopped running so we could just gape at the spectacle when we made it to the dual carriage way, halfway between the hill and the MASA HQ.

“Now there’s something you don’t see every day,” Fruity commented as the hill swelled larger and larger. It pushed soil up and broke apart, reshaping the whole area as the dirt and rocks were dislodged and tumbled down its growing dome-like slopes. The hill had lost its once pointy tip and shallow gradient slopes, and become a near perfect dome, all the while it spewed smoke and fire from the Facility’s entrance.

“Looks like a big spot ready to pop,” Fruity joked.

I was about to reply to his joke when the jet of fire suddenly stopped, and the deformed Meadowlark Hill let out a groan. Then, the entire hill collapsed in on itself. It disappeared into a deep crater where the Facility had once been, now destroyed and buried under tonnes of rock and dirt.

“It’s over. The Facility, the robots, Ironside, all gone. We’re free!” I cheered.

“Yeah. Come on, let’s get you back to Xian and then to Dr Pear so she can get you fixed up,” Fruity said as he looked me over.

“Yeah, that sounds great.”

We hurriedly resumed our run to the MASA building, but now in higher spirits. As we arrived at the building, we could sense right away something wasn’t right as Nexus was looking around in a worried fashion. At first, I thought he lost Xian, but I saw her on his back as he rushed about so that ruled out my daughter being missing. So what had him so worried?

“What has you in such a tizzy?” Fruity asked.

“Oh sir… Ma’am, you made it.” Nexus rushed up to us. “Oh, you’ve been extensively damaged, lost some critical components. Hmm, I think Dr Pear will be your best bet to get the repairs you need.”

“Already said that, Chrome-Dome.”

“Oh right. Sorry. Anyway,” He turned around so Xian could see me. I also gestured for Unit-03 to let me down. I grunted as my stressed limbs took my weight again and stood, my auto-repair system having repaired my hindleg enough to unseize it and get it working again, but it was still fragile. I smiled the best I could to the filly that looked at me in shock. I wilted when she shied away, but I couldn’t blame her. Half of my face was missing, an eye was gone, and there was a big enough hole in my cheek that you could see right into my mouth. There was also the rest of my ripped and torn flesh all along my body. I must’ve looked like one of those feral ghouls to the poor filly.

I looked at the filly softly. “I-its ok sweetie, it’s me. It’s mummy.” I spoke as soothingly as my damaged electronic voice allowed.

The young filly looked back to me with wide eyes and stared. As she continued to stare, tears began to form in her eyes before she launched herself from Nexus’s back and hugged my right foreleg, which had survived from being ripped or torn.

“Mummy, I was so scared. You-you came for me,” The filly whimpered as she began to cry.

I gently stroked her mane with a hoof soothingly. “Of course, I would go to Tartarus and back for you.”

Fruity blankly stared back as he elaborated. “One of the two alicorns that created the portal we used to get to Rust-Bucket City.”

“Ah.”

“She’s gone.”

“What do you mean she’s gone?” Fruity asked, surprised.

“I’ve looked all around and inside the MASA HQ for her but there is no sign of her. I did tell her to wait for us here,” Nexus explained. “She might have gone back to the Facility at some point, I don’t know, but she isn’t here, and I’ve seen no evidence of a struggle so she wasn’t chased off either.”

“Well, shit. That means we’ve got a long ass trek on our hooves, unless little miss pink over there can teleport us back to the Alicorn Sanctuary,” Fruity groaned.

“Who me?” Pixie asked when all eyes fell on her. “Eek! Um, I-I can’t teleport all of you, it’s really difficult to teleport more than one over great distances and my powercells still haven’t full recharged yet.”

“Terrific. Guess we’re walking. Well, this’ll be a trip.”

“Yeah, but, at least now we don’t have to look over our shoulder anymore,” I said with a smile.

“True that. Alright then, we better head off now if we’re to get there before tomorrow night.”

I nodded, and we formed a tight group. I guessed Unit-03 or Pixie would join us for now, but I couldn’t trust her at the moment because of what she did. As I settled in next to Fruity, he laid his wing across my withers before he pulled my worn hat from his duster and plopped it onto my head. I smiled and nuzzled him affectionately. My smile grew as little Xian squeezed through between our legs so she could walk between us, like we were a family. Now that the Facility, the threat of Ironside and his machines were over, I could finally think about the future and settling down with my new family.

As we left the MASA HQ grounds, the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end again and I looked behind me, towards where the Facility had once been. The crater in the distance was billowing smoke and dust after the collapse, but for a brief moment, I swore I saw a pair glowing red lights, but they were gone after I blinked. Did I really see something or was it my damaged state making me see stuff?

Epilogue

View Online

Fallout Equestria: Influx

Epilogue

One Year Later

Manehattan: Tenpony Tower

Silver Disc smiled when a familiar group of ponies entered his studio. He pushed himself away from his broadcasting console and gestured with a hoof to a series of chairs opposite the console, with a microphone hanging over head.

“So, the Heroine of the West finally graces my humble abode once again after so long, I’ve been dying-” He stopped suddenly when he began to hack and cough violently into his hoof. Once he stopped, he gave an apologetic smile and finished his sentence. “Ahem, I’ve been dying to interview you again after my sources told me you were responsible for the destruction of a mountain back in the desert, leaving behind a huge crater.”

At that moment, a young, teenage slate grey unicorn filly with wild electric blue hair charged in through the door, with a bottle of water hovering in her magic and a look of panic on her face.

“S-silver, are you alright?” She asked shakily as she placed the water down beside him.

“I’m fine. Thank you, Homage,” The old unicorn said with an appreciative smile.

The young unicorn smiled softly in relief before she nodded and then left the room to resume whatever she was doing previously.

“Who’s that?” The pegasus zebra, Crystal, asked in curiosity.

“That sweet filly is Homage, poor girl was found out in the ruins a few weeks ago. She had recently lost her travel partner and was all alone. I think the scavenger team that found her thought she could be of use to me with her talent in sound magic, which is kind of true as I’ve made her my apprentice.”

“So she’s gonna take your place?” The purple pegasus stallion, Fruity, asked as he sat on a chair.

“The voice of DJ-PON3 has to keep going even if I can’t provide it myself, and I won’t be around forever.”

“That cough… you… are you dying?” Crystal asked in shock.

Silver just gave them a curt nod and a sad smile. “Can’t live forever, but enough about the doom and gloom. Let me hear about your adventures out west. It would make an awesome story to tell the ponies of the wasteland.”

At first the zebra and pegasus were reluctant to talk as they were more concerned about the sick DJ, but after some reassurances from him they relented.

“Well…”

For the next hour the assembled group of a pegasus zebra mare, pegasus stallion, young zebra filly and robot stallion gave their accounts of what transpired from when they left the train upon their return to the Marejave over a year ago. First there was finding the Alicorn Sanctuary where they met Dr Pear and received the answers Crystal needed. Next came the escalation with little Xian’s foalnapping, the search for a weapon best suited for handling Colonel Ironside’s defences inside the RMS Luna at Dr. Pear’s insistence, and Crystal’s maternal instincts and influence from Lightning Dust’s magic causing her to charge straight for the enemy afterwards. Then came the part that made Silver cringe more than he’s ever cringed during an interview: the graphic retrelling of Crystal’s horrific beating by Unit-1000, who was immune to the Pulse Wave Emitter and had packed a far stronger punch. It was only by sheer luck that Crystal survived her encounter. She told him that if the machine didn’t toy with her so much, she would have been killed at multiple different times throughout their encounter.

Silver listened to the whole story intently, unable to ask any questions during the tale because of the shock he felt over what Crystal had been through. Once it was over, he was then very interested to know what happened after.

“That was - wow, that was a tragic tale, but at least it resulted in a happy ending,” Silver said with a smile as Crystal and Fruity both gave the filly a hug. “So, what happened after you won?”

“Well I had to be repaired, and it took several weeks for me to fully recover since Unit-1000 had destroyed so much of my body. Dr Pear sacrificed her own regeneration talisman to replace the one the machine destroyed, and after the consumption of enough metal my endoskeleton had repaired itself in a matter of days.”

“Wait, so you can eat metal to help with your repairs?” Silver asked in surprise.

Crystal nodded in confirmation before she continued. “However, I needed to go back to Upgrade Station Alpha to get my wings back. Thankfully, Dr Pear came with us and was able to get the place to recreate just my wings and fit them to me herself. I really didn’t want to go through the whole being trapped in my head thing again. From there my regen talisman just had to regrow my flesh. It took a couple of months to fully recover, and I’ve got some wicked scars under my fur, like the one across my left eye.”

“It is good to know you recovered well despite everything.”

“My recovery was also filled with more heartache as time went on,” Crystal continued with a sad frown. Silver leaned forward with interest as he listened. “When we defeated Colonel Ironside and destroyed his facility, we had an alicorn ally with us that had helped us get there, and she had disappeared while we were in the facility. We unfortunately never found her, and when we made it back to the Sanctuary and informed her sister, she began to get more and more frantic as the days passed, until she finally left the Sanctuary to go look for her herself. Contact with Tratos was lost mere days after she left and she never came back either. Then Umagon left the Sanctuary to go look for them and just like Tratos and Oxanna, she disappeared, never to be seen again.” Crystal sighed with a sad look on her face at the memory of the loss of the three alicorns. “Dr Pear then forbade any other alicorns from leaving until it could be deemed safe for them to leave unsupervised. We didn’t know what was out there, but the likely culprit was an Alicorn Hunter as there had been some that have attacked in the past according to Dr Pear. It was very upsetting to lose them as we got to become friends with Tratos and Umagon before they disappeared.”

“What about any of those machines. Could any of them have survived?” Silver asked.

“No, Dr Pear did a scan to be sure almost immediately after we returned. Nexus, Pixie and Unit-02 are the only active Infiltrators now in Equestria… I mean the wasteland.”

“Who’s Pixie?”

“Huh? Oh, Pixie is Unit-03. She was the machine that was going to act as the trap if we got off at the train station outside of New Pegasus. However, the good nature of the pony she replaced rapidly helped her evolve to gain her own sense of independence and enough will to fight her programming in the end to prevent herself from executing my little filly.”

“Damn what!”

“Yeah, Ironside wanted her to kill Xian but she resisted long enough for Nexus and Fruity to get to her and stop her. Nexus was then able to free her of his control entirely by removing her remote signal transmitter.”

“So where is she now?”

Fruity added to the conversation. “Heh, living the dream dude. She felt guilty and real bad for what her programming had her do when she was to acquire a disguise. This pretty much led to her killing the original Pixie Lulamoon, so she decided she would go back to work in entertainment and try to achieve the things the original Pixie dreamed of; she felt she owed it to her to use her magic and memories to their fullest, so that they weren’t in vain.”

“Well, that was nice of her to do,” Silver nodded in approval. “And Unit-02?”

“This one… we don’t know what’s become of him,” Crystal said with a tilt of her head in thought. “I remember Unit-02 being with another, Unit-01. They worked together and cornered us in Paradigm Cybernetics where your friend gave his life to save us. It would seem that one of them survived Quartermane self-destructing his armour, but we have no idea what this machine is doing now. From the last scan it was still here in Manehattan. Dr Pear theorises the magical surge from the explosion may have scrambled its Neural Processor.”

“Well, as long as you don’t have to worry about it for now.” He then looked at the mare and stallion with a serious look. “So, after everything that has happened, how do you feel about things?”

Crystal sighed. “I originally felt angry and deeply disturbed that my life had been stolen by Colonel Ironside. He prevented me from dying under natural causes, which I would have done back then because of my original body’s frailty. My feelings of anger for that were put on the backburner when I found out I woke up here, in the Wasteland, then I felt horrified and scared beyond description, and then I felt sorrow when I realised everypony I ever knew was dead.”

“Yeah, I bet that sucked.”

“You have no idea, but…” Crystal smiled warmly. “then I met my first real friend in the Wasteland. We had a rough patch when he found out I was mostly machine, but after we sat down and talked it out, he became my best and closest friend and eventually my lover and…” She turned to look at Fruity, who was also looking right at her with a goofy smile on his face. “My husband.” She finished by leaning forward and giving the pegasus stallion a passionate kiss on the lips.

“Aww, that’s beautiful,” Silver said with a smile as he observed the happy scene.

“Despite everything, I have a family I would not trade for the world. A loving husband, a beautiful daughter and Nexus, our loyal friend stroke butler.” Crystal then chuckled. “It’s funny, if it wasn’t for Colonel Ironside I wouldn’t have all this right now, so despite what he tried to do to me, I kinda have to thank the deranged stallion,”

“Hah, the irony and butler, him?” Silver asked as he pointed to the still skeletal robot in armour.

“Heh, yeah. Numpty here posed as a service droid while on the train back to New Pegasus, and he simply stayed in that persona. He seems to like serving,” Fruity laughed.

“What, serving you keeps you out of trouble, sir. If you didn’t have me you would have been stuck in the backdoor until Ma’am returned home with young miss Xian that day,” Nexus snarked.

“Ha, ha, I-I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Fruity laughed in embarrassment while he looked at everypony around him. Crystal snickered behind a hoof with Xian looking confused, but Silver leant forward with a raised brow.

“Oh, do tell,” He purred.

Fruity whirled around at Nexus and jabbed a hoof at him. “Don’t you say a damn word.”

“I’m sorry to interrupt again Silver, but I just received this message from one of your mobile sources,” Homage said as she hoofed the stallion a slip of paper.

“Thank you again, Homage.” He opened the paper to read the message. As he read, his face twisted into shock and surprise.

“What is it?” Crystal asked as she saw his facial expression change.

“I’ve been getting more and more reports of a white alicorn over the past few months. Thankfully, the reports have been nothing bad, but the information has been vague at best. Most I’ve been able to attain is that she is white, has a red mane and tail, purple or magenta eyes, seems to be as big as Princess Celestia, an extremely powerful magic user, and has been helping ponies here and there. But according to this, she and a unicorn accompanying her have begun to attack Sparkle World of all places.” He looked up to Crystal and her companions. “Have you seen or heard anything regarding this white alicorn?”

“I’m afraid not, we know just as much as you do. Stories about a white alicorn began surfacing in the Marejave about… what five, six months ago?” Crystal asked as she looked at her husband for confirmation to which he simply nodded. “I think the only thing we can add is that her first sighting was in the Marejave at least but other than that, she’s a mystery.”

“Huh, she’s larger than those manufactured alicorns since they are about as big as what Princess Luna had been. She’s also white, not blue, purple or green like the manufactured ones. Could she be Equestria’s first new legit alicorn in two centuries?”

“You mean a new princess?” Fruity asked.

“Well there’s no pony to crown her to make it a legal thing if she is so, heh, she’ll be Equestria’s False Princess.” The old stallion chuckled. “I like that, I think I’ll use that when I talk about her in the future, False Princess, has a nice ring to it.”

XXXXX

Somewhere between Manehatten and Fillydelphia: Sparkle World

“Are… are sure about this, Princess Solaris?” A white unicorn with a brown mane done up in a bun and wearing a pair of black-framed glasses resting on her nose asked as she looked up at the massive white alicorn.

The alicorn smiled down at her little friend, her flowing red mane billowing across part of her face and hiding one of her magenta eyes. “Of course, my dear friend Raven. If we are to fulfil our purpose on restoring the peace of this world, we must destroy the vileness that plagues it, but Sparkle World also offers a large and secure location for our ponies to live safely. If my research on the theme park is accurate, the place was built like a fortress, so once we clear it of the raider groups and take control of it, we will have a place to conduct our work while offering ponies a safe haven.”

Raven nodded in understanding, but the smaller unicorn still looked uncomfortable and afraid as they approached the theme park.

“Time to clear out the trash and begin Ironside’s last wish,” Solaris said as her horn began to glow with a golden magical light which turned to a threatening crimson as the power grew lethal.