> Fallout Equestria: New Trottingham
>  by TheOnlyRazz
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> Prologue - Of Ponies, Pipbucks and War
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Equestria; in the past it was a land full of companionship, love and magic. The world was peaceful until the Great War started. Ponies turned on Zebras and vice versa, a war full of the blood of families lost and friendships dead. Once the megaspells came; ponies, zebras and griffons across Equestria fled to Stables. It was these Stables that kept everyone safe from the deadly balefire bombs and clandestine megaspells that the zebras dropped across Equestria, bringing the Great War and, subsequently, life in Equestria to a fiery end.

After a couple decades had passed, the tainted land cleaned up allowing for ponies from the Stables to leave and thus the Equestrian Wasteland was born. It only took a few years after the first Stables opened their doors for small communities and towns to appear across Equestria, nestled in the ruins of the past. A couple hundred years after and these small communities had developed trading routes between one another, a harbour for life to take solace in. Groups of militarised political factions surfaced, each claimed they knew how to bring back order to the world. Life seemed to have found a way, society had started to rebuild and, at the centre of the Griffish Wasteland, New Trottingham stood in the once lush desert of the Griffish Isles like a sparkling jewel.

On mainland Equestria, to the west, 200 years after the bombs dropped, there was a relatively widespread altercation amongst the ponies there, but one mare and her friends helped bring about amity and twenty years later ponies lived in harmony again. In the Griffish Wasteland, in the east of Equestria, however, life wasn’t so peaceful. War broke out between The Zebra Legion and the New Equestrian Society ten years ago and ever since then the two sides have been in an eternal power struggle.

The NES currently stands above the Zebra Legion after forcing them to a small island just east of the Trottingham coastline. Beyond it is the Celestial Sea which dried up in the scorching heat of the balefire, now it’s nothing more than a dried up seafloor with extreme levels of radiation. The NES retook the Beaston Hydropower Plant over the River Trot, which flows into the southern portion of the Celestial Sea, which, thanks to the protective magic of the Hydropower plant, remained untouched by the balefire bomb the Zebras dropped off the coast of the Griffish Isles. On top of protecting the southern Celestial Sea, it produces all the necessary electricity that is required to keep all the settlements across the Griffish Wasteland in working order, though some ponies theorised that during its production one of the wartime ministries had plans to create a megaspell chamber deep under the river bed and used the power plant as access, those are just wasteland tales though, the truth of the matter is whoever controls the river, controls the ponies in the land.

Now the New Equestrian Society is one of those militarised political groups that I mentioned. They hold democracy as a basis of their ideology to return the land of Equestria back to its former glory. They are a well-organised group and the towns that fall under their jurisdiction become prosperous and adopt basic laws to uphold. The Zebra Legion on the other hoof are the opposite. They are an autocratic, totalitarian society of Zebras (and any pony who is unlucky enough to live anywhere that falls under their authority). Crime, under the Zebra Emperor, is punishable by death in any way he deemed suitable, any pony who speaks against the legion is sent to work to death. Any captives of war are enslaved, and the generals and the emperor hoof pick mares from the captives to use as their personal playthings. I’d only ever heard rumours of the kind of atrocities the zebra leaders force the mares to commit, but if they’re true then I never hope to find myself at their mercy. They are a horrible group of savages who represent a war that was fought between ponies and zebras long ago, but that’s just how war is. It hides behind good vs evil but war never changes, it will always mean death and pain for every pony engulfed in its eternal flame.


***


My name is Express and I am a courier, an over-glorified word for a mailmare basically, but the caps are good. I’m an eighth generation Stabledweller, which means I’m the great-great-great-great etc granddaughter of the original stabledwellers of Stable 83. My parents named me Express because, in their words, I was always ‘quick’. I grew faster than other ponies as a yearling; I was a quick learner as a filly and I was a quick thinker as a teen, Express, as a name, was better than having a name like ‘Smart Ass’. Everything I know is down to an education that was passed down from the first ponies who stepped out of Stable 83, 210 years ago. Over the generations my family have always passed down their pipbucks and Stable-Tec supplies. When I was fifteen, six years ago, my mother passed away from being terminally ill - or she took her life because she was terminally ill is more accurate - and so I inherited her pipbuck. On my twentieth birthday, my father disappeared with no explanation as to why. He was always a traveller after my mother died. A month after he left, he was found dead in the wasteland. He left me his 9mm Pistol and his Stable-Tec Stable 83 cannister.

My pipbuck is handy at keeping track of my jobs and it has been a great help on the rare occasions I’ve had to use force during my deliveries. The water cannister keeps me hydrated and the gun keeps me alive. Pretty basic stuff.

Now, for the sake of clarity, I should explain what a pipbuck is. First off, a pipbuck is what ponies receive in the Stables when they come of age and earn their cutie mark, it’s essentially a computer for your foreleg. It’s completely portable and it was one of the greatest feats of technology that the ponies of the past achieved.

On its interface there’s a compass that uses a detection spell that marks ‘friends’ in amber and ‘enemies’ in red. It also notes all locations I visit on a map; it’s called the Eyes Forward Sparkle, also known as the EFS. Alongside that there’s a targeting spell named the Stable-Tec Arcane Targeting Spell, or SATS for short. The Pipbuck display also features small things like a geiger counter, real-time tracking of the wearer’s inventory and the wearer’s general health. On my last delivery, however, it was useless to help me fight against a pony who had it out for me.

This is where my story starts. Tied up, a gun pointed at my head and a shallow grave behind me. Some would think that this is where my story would end but they’d be wrong. It happened on a delivery request I received from New Trottingham. I was told to deliver a small Platinum bit. I was never told why but it clearly meant a lot to the pony who was aiming a gun at me.


My eyes opened and the sky had been bleached of light as the sun barely sunk below the horizon, painting the sand red. I struggled to get the restraints off my hooves but I had no luck. My pipbuck was flashing as it displayed three enemies around me, I could make out the silhouettes of two Draconequi, to the left of the pony in front of me. My pipbuck also said that my head was slightly injured, though I didn’t need a piece of tech to feel the contusion on the back of my head from the gun butt they used to knock me out. I looked up at my killer, he was smoking and wearing a brown tweed jacket. The smell of the smoke burned my throat as he blew the thick, black vapour into my face, his eyes were those of a madpony hellbent on controlling everyone around him. They were bloodshot, green and dilated, he smiled as he saw me struggle to get free. It made me sick thinking that he was possibly getting off to my restrained position beneath his hooves.

“Good evening sweetheart”. He spoke with a dumb smirk on his face and a gun strapped to his hoof. Of course he was wearing a gun saddle, how else would an earth pony be confident enough to use a gun. All he needs to do is bite that bridle and that gun tied to his combat-saddle would, with the aid of the small intricate wires and mechanisms connected to it, orchestrate my demise in less time it takes for my heart to beat, making sure, with no prejudice, that it shall never beat again. I couldn’t help but allow a panic to flood me, I wasn’t quite ready to die. I only just turned twenty-one! He aimed the gun at my head and spoke once more, I clenched my teeth, tightened my eyes shut and tensed up every muscle in my body awaiting the shot that would tear every last thought that ever was and never could be from my mind.

“It’s just business sunshine”. These were the last menacing words I heard before his gun fired twice. No matter how much I had wanted this to be a nightmare, it turned out that this shallow grave would be my unmarked tomb and the tobacco scented sociopath and his sycophant companions were my undertakers.

Or so I thought at the time. I didn’t die that night. I was rescued by the good grace of biology and a small caliber bullet that didn’t have enough force to pierce through the thickest part of my skull and into my brain. It did however, bring me close enough to death that, if I didn’t get the help I did, I would have died in that grave. I was surrounded by blackness, I didn’t remember the dirt that was sifted over my body nor did I remember ever passing out, but I do remember waking up. That’s when I heard a new voice that was soft on my senses.
> Chapter 1 - Walk Before you Trot
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	“Easy now, give your body time to adjust”. A gentle elderly voice spoke as my eyes darted open. I sat up with a sharp breath. “Welcome back to the living”. My vision was blurry and my body felt foreign. My legs didn’t feel like they were attached to my torso and my head ached like I had just been hit by a shovel.

“Where am I? Who are you?” I spoke quickly but my tongue felt foreign, I doubt my words were even coherent.

“You’re in my house, or my surgery as it’s been for the last week or so. And all you need to call me is Doc”. The elderly pony spoke calmly. His voice was sweet to hear, reassuring even, the kind of voice you appreciate when light feels incongruous and your senses are dull.

“Why am I here, Doc?” my voice shook as I started to find my tongue again. Light began to make some sense to my eyes - but not completely; my vision was foggy and I could barely make out this elderly pony wearing a white doctor’s gown over his usually brown coloured coat. His mane was grey, possibly due to his age. Sewn on his gown, I could make out a green wreath surrounding a unicorn horn and a single snake wrapping around it - the mark of a combat medic for the New Equestrian Society. Beneath it, there were three words hemmed into the fabric, ‘In arduis fidelis’, it was an ancient pony language that I couldn’t translate.

“Well, you were found buried up in the cemetery after somepony heard gunshots up on the hill. He dug you out of your grave and brought you here since you were still breathing”. The doctor’s exposition brought memories back of the described events. I remembered being tied up and gagged by a shallow grave, a pony in tweed told me, ‘it was just business’ moments before shooting me.

“How long have I been out?” My head was swimming with thought and confusion. I didn’t remember anything after getting shot.

“Well, you were brought to me eight days ago. Ever since then, I’ve been trying my hardest to pull you through. Though, reconstructing your face was the hardest part in my professional opinion”. He deadpanned; I hoped. If it was a joke, it led my next thought to my appearance and how I looked after having two bullets put into my head.

“Give it to me straight, Doc. My chances of winning the New Trottingham beauty contest; how are they?” Humour; it’s my way of coping.

“You tell me”. The doc seemed to have an air of pride in his voice as he moved a mirror in view of my face. My coat was still a dusty brown and my mane remained the same-old dirtied blonde, my eyes hadn’t been replaced, thankfully they were still a deep, emerald green and amazingly I had no scars from the bullets. This doctor knew some magic that I couldn’t comprehend!

“It looks...like nothing happened to me at all!” I laughed with delight, “thank you so much doc!” I gave the small elderly pony a hug as I couldn’t believe I had actually survived an attempt on my life and come out looking fine. I guess it’s some well-earned luck, seeing as I was recently murdered.

The doctor strode to the other side of the room with a chuckle before beckoning me over to the door, he said he wanted to check that I hadn’t suffered any damage to my motor skills, especially after being practically dead for over a week.
I examined the wooden floor, my vision obviously hadn’t completely recovered as the floorboards appeared to bend and contort around the ambient light that flooded in through the shutters over the windows, the orange glow of the setting sun gave the room a comforting appearance. I shook my head hoping it would help my eyes focus; it did not.

I cautiously reached my front-left hoof out from under the blanket and placed it gently on the ground. The floor was warm and inviting, the sensation under my hoof left me feeling confident. I put pressure on my leg and felt the muscles tense up and shake violently from the stress of my bodyweight on atrophied muscles. In an attempt to balance myself I quickly put my remaining front-hoof onto the floor and put an equal balance of my weight onto both of them. I felt like a filly trying to learn to walk again, the effort was exhausting and I felt like collapsing against the welcoming floorboards, but I wasn’t a quitter.

Once my legs stopped wobbling under my weight, I attempted to coax my back-left leg down to the floor. The experience of instability was now focussed in my flank, as my leg shook and I grew exhausted from the exertion. My body pivoted to the right and I began to lose balance. Before I collapsed onto the floor in a useless slump, I shifted my last leg off the bed and pushed it against the floor, rebalancing my body across all four of my legs. I breathed heavily, hoping that the worst was behind me.

The doctor spoke up, “Good that’s a healthy start considering you’ve been on the cusp of death for the last few days. Your body is very weak from its ordeal so don’t feel bad about the first few steps”. I stared at him as he flawlessly loitered under the doorway at the end of the room. Beside him was a low workbench that contained a quaint chemistry set. Glass beakers, retorts, flasks and u-tubes were organised in a neat and typical fashion. There appeared to be a beaker containing a blue liquid bubbling over a burner on the far left side of the workspace, the doctor was probably brewing potions for all sorts of medicinal purposes. If I could make it to that workbench, I could use it to prop myself up and take some of the effort out of standing.

With a deep breath, I carefully lifted my front-left leg and tiresomely placed it a couple of feet in front of me. My muscles tensed up once more from the movement, the shifting of my weight from four legs to three left me unbalanced again and, combined with the weight of my pipbuck that rested on it, my step was made more cumbersome than it should’ve been. I wobbled like I was inebriated - yet I felt sober. The experience was possibly the most frustrating thing I’ve ever experienced in my life as a fully grown mare. I took yet another breath, if the doc thought I was able to walk to that side of the room then perhaps he wasn’t as good of a doctor as I thought. I tried another step with my back-right leg and moved it forward, again, only a couple of feet. I did the same with my front-right and back-left. Each step was as unsteady as the last.

“You doing okay there?” The doc spoke up after watching my embarrassing display of one of the most basic of skills.

“Oh yeah, just peachy! I always walk like a pisshead on a night out!” I shouted in response. I could hear the doctor huff with a quick exhalation from his nose, possibly to vent any anger that might have surfaced from my ungrateful words. Yet I did not apologise, I was too frustrated with my inability to walk at the age of twenty-one. It was humiliating. I tried again, starting with the same first step as before. It was more stable this time, not perfect but definitely better. I continued with each step. ‘Front-left, back-right; front-right, back-left’. I kept muttering that to myself. Each step got better than the last. Eventually, I reached the workbench and - with my front legs - I leant on it. I laughed at the fact that I had actually made it, though I was tired from exerting myself so much.

“Good, glad to see your recovery won’t have too many complications”. He smiled at me, though I could hear from his voice that he was slightly annoyed by my attitude. He stared at the window, the sun had since set in the time between me getting out of bed and walking to the other side of the room. “It’s getting late. I’m going to retire for the evening. I shall see you in the morning miss—” he paused and gestured with a slow twist of his neck and a gentle tilt of his head, making it clear that he wanted me to finish his sentence with my name.

“Oh, uh, it’s Express and sleep well doc”. After calming down from my frustration I felt bad for taking it out on him. He didn’t deserve it; after all, he did help me in my time of need. The doc didn’t say anything more after I told him my name, he simply said ‘uh-huh’ before turning and leaving the room, closing the door to my room behind him, leaving me in a room flooded with blues and silvers from the moonlit darkness that forced its way through the shutters.

I sighed as I stopped leaning on the table. I stared at the single bed tucked in the corner of my room, which was lit up by a small table-side lamp, and - with my improving ability to walk - I lumbered back over to my bed and clambered onto it. The mattress springs were worn and squeaked under my body, yet the mattress was still significantly more comfortable than the floor. I lifted the quilt with my magic and flattened it over my body, it was soft and warm. The pattern on it suggested it was hoof stitched, possibly by the doc but the tiny lettering that was hemmed into the border of the quilt - where it would rest upon the chest of a pony under it - suggested otherwise. It read: ‘Stitched with the love of those who you saved’, obviously it was stitched by some pony the doc used to work with. I rested my head onto the cold, yet inviting pillow. My body relaxed with a slow exhalation. The room was silent and calm - the perfect conditions for a peaceful night of rest. Considering I’d done nothing more than lie in bed for over a week and take a few steps, I was exhausted. With my magic, I flicked the light off by the bed, leaving the darkness to consume the room. My eyes fluttered as my comfort and exhaustion took control of me and, with a final conscious breath, I slipped into a quiet and content slumber.


***


I stirred to find myself alone and out in the desert again, but that’s not possible. I fell asleep in a bed, being aided by the doc, how was I out here? I tried to sit up but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even feel my body, I was paralysed. I tried to scream out for help but not even that worked. I looked to my left to find a wall of earth suddenly rising out of the ground and surrounding me, the sky got further and further away as the earth rose higher. I started to panic, a cold sweat swept across me. That’s when I heard his voice again.

“It’s just business”. The pony in tweed. He was back and had me buried in a bigger grave! That’s when I heard two gunshots echo across my mind.


***


I shot up out my bed with a throaty scream; combined with my quick and panicked breaths, I started to choke from terror. My body was soaked with a cold sweat as was my mane from tears that I’d been shedding in my sleep. My lungs burned as my choking started to cease, partly due to my body slowly coming down from my adrenaline high and partly due to my body running out of any air to choke on. I desperately tried to take slow, deep breaths, whilst frantically searching for anyone who would want to harm me in the room, but I was alone. I leant back onto the headboard of the bed and placed a hoof over my heart, I felt it beating hard and fast; like it was about to burst out from my chest. My pipbuck’s glow lit up the dark room with a warm amber. It was much more sightly than sitting in a gloomy room that was lit by the filtering of a barely risen sun through the windows.

“It was just a dream Express, calm down!” I told myself in a shaky and choked voice. It wasn’t long before the doctor came into my room asking me what was wrong. His eyes were wide and slightly bloodshot. “Nothing doc, I’m fine. I just had a nightmare”. I clearly startled him as much as my dream had terrified me.

“A nightmare? What about?” His breathing was fast like mine had been moments before I started to calm down. I explained it to him and he merely nodded as I spoke, he asked no questions; possibly because he didn’t need to. “Sounds like you might have those nightmares for awhile, Express. You’ve been through a traumatic experience, I would be quite surprised if you didn’t show some signs of post-traumatic stress”. His explanation came as no surprise to me, but I didn’t want to go through that fresh hell once more. Unfortunately, it seemed, I wouldn’t have much of a choice. 

“I see. And there’s absolutely nothing I can do to prevent it?” I had hoped his answer would be longer than a slow shake of his head. I nodded in understanding. “Listen, doc, about yesterday evening; I’m sorry for taking my frustration out on you”. I turned my shameful gaze to the ground as I spoke, I really didn’t want him to think of me as ungrateful, especially since he’s even concerned about more than just my physical health.

“Don’t worry about it too much, it’s normal for patients to experience some lapse in control of their anger during the process of healing. You’re not the first patient to shout at me and you won’t be the last”. He gave me a reassuring smile along with his generous words of forgiveness. “Anyway, I wish to check your vitals now and after that, I’d like you to go outside today; stretch your legs a bit, get to know the ponies of the humble town of Coltgrave”.

“Sure thing, Doc. I’m willing to do that, I’d also like to personally thank the pony who pulled me from the dirt”. I was both excited and nervous at the thought of getting out of this bedroom. As nice as it was; it was nothing compared to being able to freely roam about as I pleased.

After the doc had taken my temperature, measured and calculated my pulse and respiratory rate, he pulled out a strange looking pump. He called it a sphygmomanometer. It meant nothing to me at the time, until he told me it measured my blood pressure; something I did understand. It took a moment to manually pump it up though, so I decided to make a small conversation with him, I wanted to know more about him since he did save my life.

“So, doc; what did you do before you came here?” I smiled as he slipped the cuff of the sphygmomanometer over my front-right leg and began pumping the bladder inside.

“I was a combat medic for the New Equestrian Society. Worked at many outposts across Trottinghamshire. My last stationed position was during the last battle for the Beaston Hydroponic Power Plant,” he paused to check the aneroid as it had finished measuring the air pressure in the cuff that was over my leg. It felt tight over it, constricting it to the point it felt like my blood had stopped flowing through it all together, he wrote down the numbers on a pad and turned a release valve on the complicated device, this released the pressure in my leg and I could feel blood flowing through it again. He continued with his story, “then I retired and came here, where my late wife and I had family members living. I’m all that’s left of that family though. Anyway, your blood pressure is slightly raised, but after your stressful awakening this morning - I would say that it’ll lower over the day”. His voice sounded relieved, which meant that I had nothing to worry about.

After he was done with his analysis of my vital signs he assisted me in walking to the door, though I was considerably better at walking than I was last night. At the door, he passed me my saddlebags and told me to come back at night to rest, since he didn’t feel completely confident with leaving me to return to the wilderness just yet. I agreed, mainly due to the fact that my barely functional gait would leave me an easy target in the wasteland.

When the doctor shut the door behind me, I used my magic to rummage through my saddlebags, looking for something to wear. I pulled out my mother’s Stable 83 jumpsuit, the zipper on the back was well used, probably because almost eight generations of mares have worn this thing. The blue and yellow colours were slightly faded, but my mother was always seen wearing it. It’s actually a surprise that she and I were the same size. I considered wearing it to honour her memory but I shook my head. It would just be weird to wear it, my pipbuck was evidence enough that I come from a family of ex-stabledwellers. I continued to go through my saddle bags until I happened upon my dark-brown hooded jersey. I examined it for any damage, hoping desperately that it was still intact. The hood still only had holes for my ears, thankfully those were the only holes in it; besides the leg, body and head holes. I breathed a sigh of relief at seeing it in perfect condition, aside from a few frayed hems of course. It was a gift from my father. He purchased it from a trader in mainland Equestria during his travels and I’ve kept it ever since; that was on my seventeenth birthday four years ago and time has been kind to it. I slid the jersey over my head and pulled it tightly down my body, it did nothing to cover my flank, but it did cover most of my body and, since it was dark and my coat was not, it was great for stealth.

I stood on the porch to the doctor’s house; the sun was low in the clear blue glass that was the sky, it was barely over the horizon but it was high enough that the land was awake with life. It would’ve been a pleasant day if it weren’t for the sweltering heat of the morning. I could hear the whistle of some birds as they flew over the town, the desert wind was whistling across the dunes. The smell of arid air mixed with my own body sweat left me feeling both sticky and uncomfortable. The doctor’s house was built on a raised plateau and you could see the entire town of Coltgrave from his front door. The town was small and contained about ten homes organised in two neat columns of five houses each built parallel to a small road that led both in and out of the village.

I could see ponies out and about, tending to small farm plots or their livestock, while some ponies just relaxed under the morning sun. The building furthest from the doctor’s home was the largest of them all, it had a small wooden sign placed above the door, though from this angle I couldn’t read it.

Surrounding the perimeter of the town was a steep hill to the left and a large cliff-face on the right side that ran from one end of the town to the other, it formed a very natural looking entrance and sheltered Coltgrave from the devastating sandstorms that brewed up in the desert sands every now and again. Behind the town was a vast expanse of forest, or what was left of the forest after the megaspells fell almost 250 years ago. Now they were nothing more than a giant graveyard of trees and wildlife, it resembled more of a giant charcoal farm than a forest. Though, not all of the natural inhabitants of the Griffish forests died in the balefire cleansing of Equestria.

At the foot of the hill that led to the doc’s house, there stood a stallion. His face was concealed by a scarf wrapped over his mouth and nose, revealing only his, ice blue eyes. His pale white mane draped over his left eye, concealing even more of his face. I approached him with a careful step - the hill proved more difficult to walk down than the straight floor of the doctor’s residence. He didn’t move to greet me in a particularly personal way, instead, he gave me nothing more than an impersonal upwards nod. 

“Hi there, I’m—” 

“The pony I dug up. I don’t really care for your name or where you’re from. I dug you up because nopony deserves to be buried and left dying”. He cut me off, his voice was emotionless and dry - not the friendliest pony I’ve ever spoken to. “I just came here to give you this,” the earth pony handed me a small piece of paper, “found it placed on your body when I dug you up. It probably has more meaning to you than me”. With that, he turned and walked back to his house on the corner of the street. As he walked away I could make out his grey coat and his crossed spade and pitchfork cutie mark - a farmer. Might explain why he wasn’t eager for a conversation, he’s probably a busy pony - that or everypony in this town is sceptical about strangers - I hoped it was the former and not the latter. 

I levitated the paper the pony gave me to a position where I could read it. The note wasn’t anything cryptic, just my contract I signed off on for my last delivery. The only changes made to it was a messy scrawling of the word “terminated” - charming. I examined my contract again, for the first time since I actually accepted the delivery.

“One platinum bit from an unknown source to one Mr Pipsqueak in New Trottingham, the address given was the Royal Trottingham Hotel”. Every time I read the contract to myself nothing gave me a clue as to why some pony wanted me dead, it seemed like any other contract I received. To somepony on the outside of the courier business, it might be suspicious that the source was anonymous, but it was more common than most ponies thought to receive an anonymous delivery request. I shook my head; still confused about the reason why the delivery was important enough that the pony making it - me - needed to die. 

I remembered the large building at the edge of the town and how I couldn’t read the sign that was out the front. From the end of the road, I saw several ponies walk in and out of it, which suggested to me that it was an important building in the day-to-day lives of the ponies of Coltgrave. It was probably a good idea to check it out for myself if I was to improve my chances of learning anything about the elusive pony in tweed.

I started my arduous walk down the street towards the large building where ponies seemed to enjoy going. It was constructed from red-brick and was typically rectangular in shape, it did, however, have a bend to it and so the building resembled a short “L” shape. My slow walking was driving me mad with impatience. The more I examined the building as I moved at a snail’s pace, the more ponies I saw going in and going out. They were trotting so perfectly whilst I was restricted to a pathetic crawl.

I gritted my teeth as I grew more frustrated with my legs that weren’t communicating my movement perfectly, though with a considerably improved performance than last night’s embarrassment. I tried to pick up my pace, my slow walk became a slightly faster trot. Each step in my gait was exhausting though and I began sweating and breathing profusely. It was as if I was shot as a healthy twenty-one-year-old mare and woke up - eight days later - as an obese pony in dire need of exercise. By the time I reached the building, I was too tired to even attempt to read the sign. Instead, I sat on my haunches in the middle of the street panting and wheezing, which felt more demeaning than walking so slow that a snail could match my pace.

“You okay there ma’am?” Another mare’s voice called out to me from the door of the “L” shaped structure I overexerted myself to reach.

“Yeah, I’m— whew!” I wheezed as I replied, “I’m just a little— a little out of shape. That’s all!” I tried to take slower, deeper breaths as my lungs burned from the inside out, the humid air wasn’t helping me catch my breath. Maybe I should have taken the doc’s advice about ‘taking it slow’.

“Okay,” she didn’t sound convinced, “well when you’re done resting on your tush then come on inside and get a nice drink!” She sounded welcoming with her words, much unlike the previous pony I had met. I began to catch my breath and I stood back onto my own four hooves again - another basic skill I was beginning to get used to. I shifted my eyes from the ground where I had been sat to the sign above the door.

“The Salt-Lick Inn. A pub. Well, that explains why so many ponies were going in here”. I chuckled to myself after reading the sign. If there was one thing to be sure about in the Griffish Isles, it’s that farmer ponies love their alcohol.

With a shaky hoof, I pushed open the door to the inn and was greeted by a small area dedicated to hanging hats and jackets. It had a particularly smokey smell to it that mixed with the smell of cheap liquor that permeated the room. The room was dark and poorly lit due to the absence of windows in the entrance. In front of me was a staircase that led to the second storey where I assumed the bedrooms were, since the sign out front claimed to be an inn. To my left was the main area, where there was a line of tables and benches pushed against the outer wall, each table sat under a window, giving the ponies who sat there optimal lighting to enjoy their beers and cigars. Immediately to the right in the main room, there was a long wooden counter that was red in colour, it was clearly a bar since I could see small metal faucets that were connected to barrels of beer that were probably stored beneath the building.

The inn was full of conversation between ponies discussing the harvest and, unsurprisingly, the mare who was found buried in the cemetery on the hill - they were gossiping about me. I could also make out a distinct voice in the background, it sounded gruff and old yet pleasing on the ears. He was talking about some group called ‘The Remnants’ and how they were holed up in Stable 21 where they were harassing the ponies in and around New Trottingham. I had heard his voice before, I believed it was a pony who went by the name of “Mr New Trottingham” and was the host of Radio New Trottingham. It wasn’t a particularly original radio station, but according to my father, it was as good as the radio station that the ponies had on mainland Equestria, if I remembered correctly the host of that station was called DJ-Pon3. Maybe these radio presenters were just really lacking on clever aliases that they could go by. I breathed in the bitter scent that was the lingering smell of cheap booze and sat upon a tattered leather stall at the bar. The pony next to me moved away and sat on a table by the window - on the other side of the room. Something tells me the ponies of this town really don’t trust me.

“Don’t mind them. There’ve been rumours going around that you work for The Zebra Legion”. The voice came from the other side of the bar, more specifically, it arose out from under the other side of the bar, as did she. “You’re not are you?” The mare poured some clear water into a glass and placed it on the counter in front of me. I politely levitated the glass to my lips and took a small sip of the crisp water and relished in its refreshing nature as it ran down my gullet, cleansing my palate of the grit and dust of the desert.

“Why would I work for the Zebra Legion? We all know how mares are treated under their rule”. I was quite offended by the allegation if I was to be perfectly honest.

“That’s what I thought, but you can’t be too sure during this day and age!” The mare nodded and extended a hoof over the bar, “Name’s Salt Lick, and this is my pub!” I shook the clean white hoof in front of me and I looked the mare in her blue-green eyes framed by her short silver mane that sat neatly curtained at the back of her neck.

“Express, and it’s nice to meet a friendly face, Miss Salt Lick”. My energy to hold a conversation began to deteriorate, moving my recovery along with walking to a small trot in less than a day took more out of me than I cared to admit. I took another sip of the cold, crystal water. “I have to ask if there've been rumours going around that I work for the Zebra Legion, why did you not believe them?” I rested my front leg on the bar and leant my head onto my raised hoof as a way of balancing on the stall that offered no support for my tired body.

“You want me to be honest Express? At first, I did,” I raised my eyebrow at her words, “but when I saw that pipbuck on your leg there, I remembered a stallion I met a year or so ago. He came here looking down in the dumps, a right old mess of a pony. He sat a few feet down the bar from where you are now and couldn’t stop talking about his recently deceased wife and how he had to “be strong for her”, though he never said who ‘her’ was. He also mentioned some other pony, Odysseus? Something foreign like that. He told me he was to meet them at a place called ‘The Divide’, I don’t know. He also rambled on about how he shouldn’t have told me that name - ‘ears everywhere’ he was ranting, a bunch of crap if you ask me!” she chuckled at the absurdity that a pony could have ears everywhere, “Anyway, it all made no sense to me - the moral is, he wore a pipbuck just like that one. He even had a small flask he kept drinking from. It had uh, 83 written on it in big yellow letters!” My eyes widened and my mouth fell open slightly. I fumbled through my saddlebags and placed my father’s flask onto the countertop. “Yeah just like that! Where’d you get it?”

“This was my father’s,” I paused. I was amazed that my father had even been here when he travelled after mother passed away. But who was this Odysseus? He never mentioned him. “I was given it when he was found dead in the wasteland”. Salt Lick didn’t need long before she put two and two together. She curled her lips in an uncomfortable manner and placed a hoof on the table in front of me.

“I had no idea that pony was your father. I did think you might’ve known him though since you wear a pipbuck too. Just didn’t imagine you’d have known him as family. I’m so sorry, Express”. I wiped a tear from my eye and smiled softly at the mare. I didn’t speak anymore, I felt that if I opened my mouth I would begin sobbing and nopony wanted to witness that.

I pushed away from the bar and gave a gentle downwards nod to Salt Lick before I went back to the door of the inn. I didn’t learn about the pony in tweed, but I did learn about someone who may have been the last pony who saw my father alive. I needed to learn more. I would have to find him and ask him about my father. I wanted answers, why did my father seem so adamant about leaving about a year ago? And why did he need to be ‘strong’ for ‘her’...for me? I shook my head. It was starting to ache from all the new questions I had. First, there was a pony who had it out for me, now there’s a pony who knew my father? At this point, I just wanted to go to bed.

Once I was back outside, I could see that the sun had started to set over the world once more. The sky was burning red from the western horizon and bled into purple as the sky spread into the east. There were still no clouds in the sky though, there never were any clouds during drought season. I turned my head slowly to look at the home that I was staying in until I was completely recovered from my ordeal. The lights in the porch glowed like a lighthouse beckoning me towards harbour, a safe place to lay my head for the night. My body was screaming at me for a release from moving, but no matter how badly I needed to sleep, I would not be running back. I paced myself, taking slow and steady steps back to the hill that the doctor’s residence sat upon and, even slower still, I dragged myself up the hill to door. Once there, I opened the door and closed it behind me, which is how it remained until the next day.


***


I repeated the process of waking up from nightmares, getting my vitals measured and strolling back and forth to the Salt-Lick Inn for several days. Before I knew it, six days had passed and I was back to feeling like myself. My walking had improved and I was now able to trot from place to place at a typical pace. On the few occasions that I did break out into a full gallop, I didn’t feel like I was close to dying. I was the Express I was before I was put into and pulled out of a grave. Unfortunately, the nightmare was still haunting me at night, which - according to the doctor - meant I might have to be more patient, or I should seek something to calm my post-traumatic stress - he suggested a hobby, but I knew getting answers would be my stress release. The doc wanted me to stay just one more night to be certain that no further complications would arise and I would be free to finding answers to my questions. Who was Odysseus? And why did the pony in tweed want me dead? Today though, I wanted to return to the Salt-Lick Inn and tell Salt Lick the good news - that I was better and I could leave soon.

As soon as the doctor gave me freedom to leave the house for the day, I took off down the road at a healthy trot and I was down the hill and to the Salt-Lick Inn in less than a minute, but something seemed off. There weren’t any ponies going in. Every pony seemed to have suddenly had an interest in sobriety, which was odd for farmer ponies who had shown no signs that suggested they cared about the health of their livers. I pushed on the door to the inn but it wouldn’t budge. Something was definitely wrong. I went around the back of the inn and tried the back door, which was open. I called into the darkness that hung around the back entrance. No pony replied, not even Salt Lick. I was concerned. I flared up a lumination spell on my horn and stepped into the darkness that had consumed the once lively bar. The spell on my horn barely lit up the building, and the faint glow of my pipbuck made the darkness feel thicker.

“Hello? Salt? Is everything okay?” I called out into the darkness once more, hoping for a response. I got nothing. I entered the main area of the pub, the floor felt sticky and moist. The smell of beer still lingered on the edge of the air as did another smell that seemed familiar, it left a copper taste in my mouth. The windows had all been covered with wooden barricades, which explained why it was so dark in there despite it being morning. The radio blasted static into the room filling the building with a haunting symphony of the twinkle of my horn’s spell, static and my own breathing. I tried to turn the lights on but the power wasn’t working, instead, I was given nothing but the whimpering click of the light switch.

“Okay, this is most definitely not right”. I whispered to myself. I checked my pipbucks EFS, but there were no markers inside the inn. The static from the radio was bothering me, I decided to attempt to tune it to the Radio New Trottingham frequency, but upon turning the dial slightly to the right I heard a stranger's voice echo across the radiowaves.

“‘I’m sorry I wasn’t strong enough’. His last words, correct? Hello, Express. Your friend Salt Lick shouldn’t have told you my name, only one pony can ever know of my existence at any time, and I do have ears everywhere. Your father was dumb enough to tell her it, but then your father knew he had nothing left to lose. Except you of course. If you wish to know more about your father, then follow my trails. They should be easy to find. When you’re close to one your pipbuck will detect an unknown radio frequency. Keep an eye out for the Equestrian flag painted onto walls; see those and you’ll be following in my hoofsteps. Discover my past, find my location. Go alone”. My heart jumped to my throat. I dropped the radio onto the floor and broke it, not before my pipbuck recorded the frequency on its radio-wave receiver. I stumbled back into the middle of the room where I felt a hoof brush through my mane. I turned around and shined the light from my horn behind me, I saw a white leg floating from the roof, as I followed it up, the body it was attached to became visible.

Salt Lick hung lifelessly from the rafters, a rope was tied around her neck and hung from a hook that had been quickly placed into the roof. I felt sick. Her face was blue and I could see tears dried beneath her eyes. There was a deep puncture in her chest that stained her coat red as it congealed and clung to her fur. Her blood ran from just below her neck and down between her legs and onto the floor. I saw a pool of the red liquid under her, along with a trail that led from the backdoor to here. I wasn’t walking in spilt beer when I entered, I was stepping in my friends spilt blood, and now I understood what that familiar smell was. I gagged. I couldn’t believe that she was here like this, stabbed, bloodied and hanged. Yesterday, she and I had been laughing about how funny life could be, and now here she was, hanging from a rope tied to the roof. I felt tears begin to swell in my eyes. On her body was a small note stabbed into her by a knife. I pulled her down from the ceiling and removed it. The note read:

“Come alone, or not at all. And don’t you make the same mistake she did. You’ll find yourself in the same situation. I’ll be waiting courier number six. Odysseus.” I crumpled the note up and stashed it into my saddlebag. 

“I will avenge you, Salt Lick, I’ll find his trail and I’ll follow it until I find him. I will get him to tell me about my father. Then I’ll kill him for what he did to you”. I felt a tear roll off my cheek. I turned around and left through the back of the inn, the same way I entered. I couldn’t leave her in there to rot though. I had to tell the sheriff of the town, but in a way that didn’t mean I would have to tell him I was there and what I found. I decided to leave an anonymous note slid under the door of the sheriff’s office which two houses down from the Salt-Lick Inn. I then returned to the doc’s house and without a further word, I locked myself in my room, where I stayed for the remainder of the day, thinking about the ways I would get revenge for my friend.

The next morning the doctor approached me, he didn’t take any medical examinations. He did ask me if I had another nightmare though, the answer was yes - I had several in fact. The usual nightmare where I was in the desert with the pony who tried to murder me and one which repeated the sight of my friend - Salt Lick - swinging from the rafter of her inn. Her face soaked with tears and the blood that was draining from the stab wound in her chest, pooling on the floor beneath her. The sound of the rope creaking as she swung back and forth. The message of the pony over the radio echoed through my mind. I tried to forget it, but that was easier said than done.

“I guess this is goodbye then, Express. Try and take things easy from now on”. The doctor interrupted my thoughts with words of concern. I shook my head.

“Unfortunately Doc, I have a delivery to make and a pony to follow”. I spoke with a bitterness that I hadn’t ever felt before. I was teeming with anger and sorrow. I wanted to get revenge. I also wanted answers. 
“You’re going to go after the pony that tried to kill you?” he sighed, “Well if you’re sure, and there’s nothing I can say to deter you from this path, then I suppose I have information that will help you”. The doctor sounded reluctant with his words, almost as if he felt guilty for giving me information that he thought would lead to somepony dying.

“Doc, if you know anything, please. Tell me”. I stared the old pony in the eye with a serious expression that seized control over my face, a seriousness that I had never felt before. There was a sense of clarity to my thoughts that made me feel as though my path was the right one to follow.

“I saw a pony dressed in a tweed coat hanging around the town the same day you were brought to me. He hung around the Salt-Lick Inn, probably drinking away any sense of guilt he may have felt”, the mention of the inn made me retreat into my mind again, remembering Salt Lick’s face, the fear that was immortalised onto it. That image would never leave my mind. “He went west, towards the New Equestrian Society outpost. Try asking the ponies there if they saw or heard of anypony who fits your attacker’s description”.

“Thank you, doc. You have no idea how much this means to me”. I gave the elderly pony a quick hug to display my gratitude. Not only for helping me recover, but also for helping me on my quest for answers and, subsequently, vengeance. Once I was done hugging him though he told me to wait by the door before I left. Moments later he came back to me with a small, sandy brown box with a red first aid cross on it and a sealed potion bottle full of a purplish liquid.

“I know they’ll be no help in removing bullets from your head but these should keep you from finding your way back onto my doorstep”. He spoke in an urgent tone. He opened the box and showed me several bandages, ranging from the magical kind that helped seal wounds whilst keeping a wound dressed to the regular dressing used to keep a minor wound clean and bandaged.

“I don’t know what to say Doc. Thank you so much for this! This is far too kind of you!” I placed the box of medical supplies into my saddlebags. I examined the potion and pondered its origin and use, I shook it at the doctor, “What’s this do?” I understood that there were magical potions that could be created by anypony but they’re usually pink in colour. I’d never seen a purple potion.

“It’s a potion I’ve been working on for years. It’s like your typical healing potions which heal any wound rapidly, but the basic variants usually leave scars for deeper wounds. This particular potion not only increases the rate of healing but also improves the division of deep tissue cells which would normally scar and remain damaged from gunshot wounds or stabs. I haven’t got a name for it so I just call it a Stimpotion. Short for stimulant potion. If you get shot, and the bullet passes straight through, drink this and you’ll be fine in seconds with no scarring and perhaps a brief feeling of strength. Same with a stab wound”. I stared at the doc with a thoughtful expression as I tried to understand all the science he just dropped onto me.

“So let me get this straight. If I get stabbed or shot, and I drink this, I won’t experience scarring and I’ll feel stronger for it? Is this the potion you used to fix my face?” I placed the potion into my saddlebag, where my pipbuck would catalogue it. The doctor nodded, suggesting that my summary, whilst absent of the science, was accurate. “Thank you doc, I will remember everything you’ve done for me”. I smiled as I placed my hoof on the door, prepared to step out into the desert again and this time, I wouldn’t be returning to Coltgrave. As I stepped out of the door and into the ruined sands of the Griffish Wasteland the doctor called out to me.

“Express!” he stood in his doorway while I stood out on his porch, “I hope you find what you’re looking for. Without losing who you are”. The doctor’s final words were given to me as he closed the door behind me. Leaving me alone to think about what he said.
I took a deep breath of the hot air of the morning and began my walk through the street of Coltgrave. The words of the pony in tweed echoing through my mind and ricocheting off my thoughts like the gunshots he put into my head should have done. The face of Salt Lick after Odysseus had her murdered to pass me a message. The final words of the doctor who nursed me back to health. So much passed through my head, each voice merged into the next. ‘It’s just business. Follow my trail. Without losing you who are’. It was enough to drive a normal pony insane. But I was not a normal pony. I was a survivor, and I would follow the hoofsteps of the pony who tried to kill me.

> Chapter 2 - The Example
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	The road from Coltgrave to the local New Equestrian Society outpost was a fairly long journey over the dunes and decaying rubble from ancient towns that were never revived after the Stables opened some 210 years ago. Standing on the edge of the petite settlement, I could see vast stretches of desert around me as far as the eye could see. The sun scathed the land with treacherous heat and typical winds whipped ponies with sandpaper lashes, the best chances a pony had to survive out here in the Griffish Wasteland was to take shelter when the wind started to pick up and carry as much water as possible. I breathed in the tepid air and fanned at my face with my hoof as I could feel sweat beading off my brow, thankfully though, the wind was quiet, nothing more than a faint whisper spreading wisps of sand from dune to dune.

I took my first steps beyond the town of Coltgrave, my hooves sunk into the sand and dust with each step, making walking difficult. All that time I spent trotting and galloping turned out to be for nothing. I levitated my Stable 83 flask out of my saddlebags and drank thirstily from it. The lukewarm water filled my mouth and soothed my throat, though it would’ve been more refreshing had the water actually been cold. I suppose the enchantment that made the flask so vital was nothing more than a simple fusion spell that fuses oxygen and hydrogen from the surrounding air, creating an infinite supply of water. The wonders of Stable-tec still amazed ponies, they even amazed me and I’d been taught how these objects work. Still, it could have benefitted from some kind of built in cooling since drinking warm water in the middle of the desert is fairly dissatisfying. Though it did beat dehydrating by a long shot.

I continued to mull over the events that took place over the course of the last couple of weeks. Firstly, there was a pony dressed in a tweed jacket who attempted to murder me because of a delivery I was making. Then there was this Odysseus, a mysterious omniscient pony. Guess Salt Lick was wrong to laugh about him having ‘ears everywhere’, how he does though, is another question entirely, and the only way I’d ever find the answer is if I did as he asked. My thoughts colluded, coming up with wild conspiracies about Odysseus and whether he was connected with the pony in tweed and why he felt it necessary to kill me, perhaps Salt Lick was just a loose end he needed tying up. I kicked at the sand in frustration.

“I just don’t understand why!” I screamed into the painfully silent desert, my voice was swallowed by the dust and the sand all around me. I took a deep breath to try and calm myself. My pipbuck was playing Odysseus’ message on repeat and had been since I left the confines of Coltgrave, his deep and droning voice rang clear as day out into the desert wind. I had hoped that by listening to it, I could have recognised the pony’s voice, but I didn’t. Instead, it just kept reminding me of what I saw in the Salt-Lick Inn, the sound of her swinging on a rope, the smell of her blood penetrating my senses, the taste of bitter mixing with the taste of metal and fusing in my mouth, it was enough to make a pony sick.

I switched my pipbuck’s radio off and stood atop a sand dune, listening to the dense silence of the desert. I took a moment to look around me, I was walking parallel to the monumental cliff-face that provided a natural shelter to the town of Coltgrave, which suggested I was headed in the right direction. The scorched stone that formed the face of the sheer drop was brown - almost black - in colour. I could make out tree roots shooting out from the crag and cracking the rock wide, clearly at one point in its history there existed a lush forest atop it. Now though, nothing perched gracefully on its precipice, only dust, dirt and sand dominated the environment. The squirrels that would have darted amongst the canopies were replaced by overgrown scorpions that hunted in the early morning, hiding behind the boulders and rock formations that were once hidden in the mysteries of a jungle. The colourful birds that didn’t perish in the balefire became hideously mutated and preyed on anything that they could get their talons around, including, but not limited to, fully grown mares like myself. According to the knowledge that was passed down from my family members who lived in the Stables, nopony knew why the Griffish Isles, which were once so green, became an arid desert where life struggled to survive. The answer didn’t matter though, this was where we lived, and this is where we’ll survive.

After calming the storm of thoughts in my mind, I was able to gather myself and level my thinking to taking a step at a time. First things first; reach that N.E.S. Outpost. According to my pipbuck, it was about a day’s walk from Coltgrave, trudging through the sand which tried to devour each hoofstep. On top of the difficulties I would have trekking across the oceanless sea of brown and yellow, I would have to find shelter during the night. As hot as it was during the day, the cold of the night was enough to freeze a pony in a matter of hours, twilight was also the perfect hour of the day when the Tatzelwurms burrowed up onto the surface to hunt. As confident as I was with my father’s 9mm pistol - his ‘Light in Darkness’ as he called it - I would be no match for a Tatzelwurm in the middle of the night. Fortunately, the sun was still high in the sky, which gave me several hours of walking before I’d need to take shelter. 
“Best start walking again, Express. Standing here watching time pass whilst conversing with yourself is one way to drive yourself crazy”. I muttered to myself under my breath, the sound of my voice pleased my senses more than the monotonous whistle of the wind. I continued my long walk across the desert. My pipbuck resonated a low humming, it was the only sound I heard besides the whisper of my breathing and the shifting of the sand beneath my hooves. 


***


It didn’t take me long to get tired of walking - only three hours to be exact - the repetition of my hoofsteps and the humming of my pipbuck monitor was beginning to drive me mad. I was putting my caps on finding some resemblance of civilisation but instead, I found nothing other than a small campsite comprised of a small fire-pit, two sleeping bags and a small, blue tent pitched around the campfire. I grunted in frustration. The sun was beginning to set and I was still out here wandering around like a lost filly. I stood at the centre of the camp and slowly spun on the spot, looking for any sign of civilisation besides this tiny joke of a campsite. Who camps in the middle of a desert knowing deadly predators slumbered beneath the sands? Idiots, that’s who. Of course, there was no sign of a town or village on the horizon. All I could find was a boulder big enough to hide a hungry Giant Taintscorpion adjacent to the campsite.

I sat down next to the fire-pit and reviewed the map on my pipbuck. There had to be some town nearby. I flicked through the menus on my pipbuck. From my health status to my inventory, to my discovered radio station frequencies and then finally to my map. It revealed to me nothing. My compass continued to show me which direction I had to walk across the desert and that was all. Only, my Eyes Forward Sparkle wasn’t being completely worthless. It was showing three markers moving towards me. One amber marker and two white ones. White markers? I’d never seen white ones before. If red meant enemy and amber meant friend, I assumed white was a middle ground, neutral markers? I darted my eyes around looking for some place to hide, all I could see though was that boulder I saw before. I quickly picked myself up out of the dust and silently ran behind the rock, peeking out around it with the hood of my jersey sitting on top of my head. I could just about make out the three ponies the markers were pertaining to and before long, I could hear them too.

“So let me get this straight, the boss wanted us to go and steal dynamite from the quarry?” One of the voices spoke with a hushed whinny, it was soft like a mare’s but had a distinct bitterness to it.

“Yep”. The other voice was a stallion’s, it was deep and harboured a certain masculinity to it.

“And he also told us to take hostage any pony who caught us and that’s why we dragged this worthless whelp through the desert with us?” The mare spoke again, and I didn’t need to guess why I could still only hear two voices.

“Yep”. The stallion clearly wasn’t much of a speaker. I could hear a third voice now, it was muffled like it had been gagged and was unable to make any sound besides a faint stifled cry for help.

“Oh shut up! If you hadn’t bothered to leave your post to investigate something you heard you wouldn’t be here right now!” I could hear a heavy thud, and could make out - with what light was left from the sky - a large gun shaped object being slammed down onto the third pony, which produced a response of a muffled scream. Why on earth was my pipbuck suggesting these ponies were neutral? They were clearly not a couple I wanted to associate with.

“Whoa, hang on a second,” the mare spoke again once she was done hitting their hostage whilst the stallion lit a fire, “there’s hoofprints here that aren’t mine or yours”. Fuck, I probably should have covered my tracks.

I stopped peeking around my hiding spot when I saw them follow my hoofprints (with their gaze) to the very rock I was hiding behind. I glanced back down to my pipbuck and saw that the white markers had become red, they definitely weren’t neutral anymore!

“Whoever’s there, come out now and you won’t suffer!” The mare shouted, her voice carried across the desert sands and destroyed the silence of the night, the moon had started beaming a bright silvery light over the land and made hiding about as easy as standing out in the open in the middle of the day. I could hear their hoofsteps in the sand shift closer and closer to where I was hidden. I didn’t have a plan of escape, and I feared that if I attempted to gallop over the desert sands I would last about five seconds before I felt a bullet burrow its way through my flesh like a sadistic parasite. I decided that my best bet was to assume their ‘take hostages’ command still applied.

“Alright, you caught me!” I slowly came out from behind the boulder, “I meant no harm. I was just looking for shelter for the night when I stumbled upon your camp!” I thought that, perhaps, explaining myself would have sorted the situation out.

“Sure you were, I mean, it’s cold and scary out at night, right? And I guess it’s lonely enough that eavesdropping on a private conversation substitutes company”. I could tell from her sarcastic tone that I had merely wasted my breath. The mare had a brown coat with a two-toned mane of white and black and the gun I saw turned out to be a combat rifle, which was aimed right at me. She gestured me over to the fire, next to their current hostage. I obeyed and sat down next to them. “Congratulations, you’re now our hostage! Make any sudden movements and I shoot you. Try to overpower us and I’ll shoot you. Try to struggle free and I’ll—”

“Shoot me?” I interrupted her, which didn’t go down too well. The stallion shot me a rather pissed off look. Clearly, the green stallion wasn’t accustomed to the desert, his apple related cutie mark suggested he was an apple farmer from the apple fields down south near the river trot, or perhaps an apple scrumper. Hard to tell with a cutie mark consisting of an apple and a burlap sack. His mane was pinkish in colour and had stains of colour speckled through it. If he was supposed to look intimidating then perhaps he might have wanted to consider a change of career.

“Interrupt me again and I’ll shoot you. Do I make myself clear?” Her voice which was once gentle with only a small hint of bitterness was now overwhelmingly bitter and housed nothing gentle about it. I merely nodded whilst the stallion tied my hooves together and taped my mouth closed. I couldn’t help but have a distasteful sense of deja vu. 

The mare and stallion, whose name’s I had heard uttered a couple of times - Applesack and Marble, hardly names fit for psychopaths or criminals - left me and the other hostage by the fire, which kept us warm. What we weren’t though, was safe from any wild predators who might have wanted to kill and eat us.

I examined the other hostage and saw a small black uniform with an embroidered 3 headed lion on the shoulder, which was the banner of the New Equestrian Society. They were also a mare, I could tell from her small frame and her somewhat attractive candy-pink eyes. Her coat appeared to be olive with a shoulder-length silvery blue mane. She was an earth pony, made obvious by her lack of a horn and pegasi wings. She had a deep cut above her left eye, probably from the beating she received earlier from her captors. I couldn’t help but feel bad for her, she seemed to be young, no younger than 18 if she was a member of the New Equestrian Society, I wouldn’t be surprised if the night she was on duty was her first. I could see a tear rolling off her cheek, whether from pain or fear was unclear, though that is a distinction without a difference.

As we sat there, helplessly tied next to a stoked campfire, the two ponies holding us hostage watched us. Marble was still aiming her combat rifle at us, holding it with her magic field that glowed a remarkably similar colour to my own, whilst Applesack was sat opposite us by the campfire, cooking something that smelled of blood. My stomach churned, I’d heard of ponies in the wasteland resorting to eating meat but I’d never tried it myself. I preferred buying fruits from the farmers employed by the New Equestrian Society. The land was cleaned when the clouds cleared twenty years ago which allowed for agriculture to exist in pony culture again, though, to the confusion of everypony, the Griffish Isles still remained a vast desert. According to the Radio New Trottingham, the clouds clearing was the doing of a pony whom he referred to as “The Stable Dweller” - my father was about my age when it happened - I was only one. On top of that, she lifted an old stigma of Stable ponies, we used to be looked at as some kind of slave to the old system, warmongers; simply because we were protected by the ponies of old. Even us ponies who were related to those who hailed from the Stable. Lost in my thoughts, I failed to notice that Applesack had thrown a hunk of meat from a Taintscorpion onto a small plate in front of me. He also removed the tape covering my mouth.

“Eat”. The light green earth pony sounded impatient and irritated at the fact that he had to waste food on me. And when I say waste, I meant it. There was nothing in Equestria that would force me to eat meat.

“I’m going to have to decline. I’d rather eat the sand I’m sitting on”. I spat at him. He wiped my saliva from his muzzle before he kicked me in the gut. I buckled over as his hoof sunk into my body, the air in my lungs was forced out with a breathless scream and my diaphragm felt tight as my torso exploded with pain. I bit my lip as I tried to get a breath into my lungs whilst also trying to overcome the agony in my abdomen. Regaining my breath was difficult, I began coughing as I continued trying to force my diaphragm to move. I could hear the stallion laughing as he observed the result of his kick. Marble simply rolled her eyes at her partner’s brutality, or at my disobedience, I was more inclined to believe it was the former.

Once I could breathe again, I felt faint. Temporarily losing the ability to breathe made me panic as I got more and more starved of oxygen. Once Applesack could hear my deep and laboured breaths, he retaped my mouth and gave the other hostage my plate of meat. Unlike me, she ate. Which disgusted me slightly, though I’d rather be made the example if this young mare avoided any further abuse. I closed my eyes as I relished in the warmth of the fire and took solace in being able to breathe again.


***


When I came round from passing out, it was the middle of the night and our captives had fallen asleep and - based on how heavily they were snoring - they weren’t woken easily. It gave me time to work out an escape plan. One I would have to enact in the dark and in complete silence. 

The binds around my hooves seemed to be loosely tied, obviously, the stallion who tied them didn’t spend enough time learning how to tie a knot that wasn’t easily undone by a unicorn, maybe he should have been doing that rather than practising kicking bound mares. My horn glowed a shallow green as I began to fiddle with the ropes, I began to feel anxious about whether or not my captors would notice the sickly glow from my horn. I untied the double knot over my front hooves with ease, same with my back hooves. Once I was free I slowly removed the tape over my mouth, it was hard to not cry out in pain as it tore out hairs on my muzzle, leaving my skin underneath feeling raw. Once the tape was off I quickly began to free the mare with me. She was originally asleep, but once she felt her bonds loosen her eyes opened wide and she seemed eager to get away. As soon as the binding ropes were off and the tape over her mouth was painfully removed she took off into the swallowing darkness of the desert, with me on her tail. Sure we were now cold and galloping amongst the dunes in the dark, but we weren’t at gunpoint anymore.

Eventually, the mare stopped running when we came across what appeared to be a small cottage in the desert. The door wasn’t locked and the building seemed large enough to shelter a couple of ponies for a night, comfortably. It was a small stone building with a chimney jutting out from the roof, implying there was a fireplace inside, the silvery glow of the moon in the black night sky shimmered over the building, like some kind of divine intervention that such a welcomed break (from tiresomely galloping across the desert) would just so happen to grace us and shelter us from the dangers of the wasteland. We both took shelter inside and moved a bookshelf in front of the door, barricading it, on the off-chance that Applesack and Marble would wake up and find this place. We could now take a breather, luckily for me as my stomach ached from bruising, my pipbuck was alerting me to what was either a cracked rib or internal bleeding, though based on the fact I was only in pain and not dying, it was easily deducible as a cracked rib.

“Thank you so much!” The young mare pulled me into a tight embrace as she laughed with tears in her eyes, the hug caused me to wince due to the tenderness of my body from the result of my disobedience. “I thought I was a goner for sure!” She buried her face into my shoulder, which I could feel getting wet from her tears as she began sobbing. I patted her on the back and gently hushed her, trying to get her to calm down.

“It’s okay now, we’re safe they’ll never find us in here”. I spoke with a calming whisper, I knew it’s what I would’ve liked to have heard if I were in her position. I gently pulled away from the hug and smiled at her, she smiled back and wiped her eyes dry.

“I suppose I should tell you my name huh?” She blushed, probably from the realisation that she’d been crying into the shoulder of a complete stranger. I shrugged, a mistake that I bit my lip through, thankfully I had magical bandages inside the first-aid box that the doc gave me.

“Only if you feel comfortable, but first maybe we should get a fire going. It’ll take the chill out of the air”. I smiled again, though on the inside I was screaming. I carefully walked over to the quaint open, stone fireplace that sat at the heart of the only room in the house, which made it feel larger than it looked on the outside. I levitated a couple of logs into the fireplace from the bundle that was placed next to it centuries ago and lit a match from an ancient matchbox I found sat on the mantel. It didn’t take long for the dry logs to catch alight. Once they did, the room was lit up with both light and warmth. As inviting as it looked, the walls had the antlers of deer hung on trophy displays, small birds were taxidermied and modelled in a flying pose and hung from the ceiling and the wooden floor had a brown bearskin rug covering it; clearly whoever lived here before the war was a hunter - an avid one at that - it was a bit disturbing to say the least.

I sat on a large plush chair that was slightly tattered but for the most part, it was intact and amicably comfortable, it took the pain out of my bruised body as it sunk into the cushioned chair. I encouraged the young mare with me to sit down in the seat opposite me.
“I’m Express by the way. I’m a courier”. I broke the awkward silence with a couple of modest facts about myself, hoping it would make her feel slightly less uncomfortable around me. I saw her eyes shift around the room, clearly uneased by the company of a complete stranger, especially a complete stranger whom she met under a hostage situation.

“My name’s Essay Strive, though my friends just call me ‘S’. You know... like the letter? It suited me through the academy. I’m a security pony at the New Equestrian Society Quarry site. Though I really doubt I have a job left there after allowing two ponies to break in and steal the last of the dynamite and getting myself taken hostage”. She chuckled nervously as she spoke, her voice was raspy and she had a squeak to it. It was cute in a way.

“How old are you Essay?” I leant my posture forward into the question and immediately regretted moving my broken body, this wound seriously needed bandaging. Yet my curiosity remained as to why a young-looking mare was entrusted with a high-risk job.

“I turned 18 last month. I passed the academy at the top of my class. They said I was the most talented recruit they ever had!” She sat up straight and smiled, showing pride in her own ability.

“I bet your parents must be proud of you, huh?” My smile wasn’t returned, her pride filled eyes collapsed into a melancholic gaze at the floor. I clearly struck a nerve when I asked about her parents. Were they not pleased about the career their daughter took? She fell silent again. I cleared my throat and resided to listening to the crackling of the logs in the fire. I wasn’t going to press her for details if she wanted to answer the question she would. 

I sat up from the chair and went to examining the room, sitting still made me uneasy and, despite my pain, I hated being motionless. The dusty shelves were lined with books with broken spines, many were burned from the balefire bombs of the war, but some were still intact. Most of the covers were about hunting, ‘Your First Kill’, ‘Dehorning and the Process of Skinning’, ‘Taxidermy for Fools’. I shook my head as I read the titles.

“Disgusting don’t you think? How a pony centuries ago found it entertaining to kill innocent creatures?” I tried to change the topic of conversation, but it didn’t catch. She merely shrugged and continued to be lost in a world of her own. It was at this point that I decided to leave her alone to her thoughts. I, instead, turned my attention to the decrepit desk tucked away in the corner of the room. There were papers sprawled across it. I figured there had to be something there of some use. We were in a house that occupied a hunter, yet no gun was adorning the wall? I would have bet caps that the pony who lived here had kept a gun in that desk.

I approached it and studied the dust engulfed surface, the papers were untidily strewn about the desk. The documents were in no way legible, they were burned and the words had been destroyed by the fires of war. Remarkably though, the desk seemed to still be in a functional condition. In the front of the desk were multiple drawers, several had been opened, ransacked and emptied, except one. It was locked however, I grabbed the handle with my magic and tried to shake the drawer loose, but I had no luck, I have no idea why I thought that would have worked. I looked through the other drawers, hoping a key remained but my search produced nothing. 

“Well bollocks”. I exclaimed under my breath, though audible enough to be heard by Essay. She sat up from the chair and was staring at me, a hint of worry was in her eyes. 

“I’m sorry,” she said with an urgency in her voice. I stared at her in confusion, my eyebrow was raised, I mouthed ‘what for’ at her. She responded, with her same urgent tone, “I-I, uh, I was—, I didn’t mean to ignore you”. She stuttered with a trepidatious squeak, I shook my head with an empathetic smile on my face.

“Look it’s fine, I asked you a personal question about your parents, no need for you to be sorry for not wanting to talk about them,” I went back to searching through the drawers for a key to the one drawer that was still locked, “besides you don’t even know me, if you wanted to tell me something then you would, I’m not going to press you for details”. I sighed after I finished overturning all the drawers.

“What’s wrong?” Essay approached the desk that I was trying to gain entry to, she took one look at the lock and laughed, “Oh, that’s child’s play!” She paused and examined the mess on the floor, she was looking for something, “you got a screwdriver and a paper clip?” Her laugh followed by her question had once again brought a confused look on my face. I levitated exactly those tools she asked for out of my saddlebags. She snatched them out of my levitation field, eagerly, like a young filly snatching an apple from their father’s hooves, and slotted the (now misshapen) paper-clip into the keyhole for the lock. She twisted it with the screwdriver, every now and then she fiddled with the paper-clip,  jimmying the tumblers before she continued twisting with the screwdriver. After several short seconds of her fiddling the lock it released with a satisfying click. My jaw fell open and I simply stared at her in amazement, I’d heard that some ponies had a knack for infiltrating locks without a key, but never had I actually seen it with my own two eyes.

“How did you just do that?” I continued staring with my mouth open. She merely shrugged, claimed she learned how to do it whilst she was at the academy. Amazing, so not only did they teach young colts and fillies how to fire guns and follow orders at this academy, but they also taught them how to pick locks. I shook my head and pulled the drawer out and, as I suspected, a .44 Scoped Hunting Revolver slid down the drawer, if only there was some pony around to claim those caps I would have bet. “Perfect!” I whinnied, as a smile crept across my mouth. I levitated the gun up onto the desk and checked its chambers, it still had six bullets loaded and - to add to our luck - there was an additional box of .44 calibre bullets inside the compartment.

“Why is this perfect?” Essay gave me a look that suggested she hadn’t understood why I was happy to find a gun, “You have a gun of your own in that holster around your thigh”. Well props to her for being observant.

“It’s not for me, it’s for you. If those ponies who took us hostage come back then we stand a much greater chance if we both have a weapon”. I levitated the gun in front of her, the handle hung close to her mouth. She bit onto it and gave me an uneasy look, her eyebrow sat cheekily raised over her eye as if to say ‘What am I supposed to do with this’, clearly they never taught her how most earth ponies shot a gun in the wasteland (which was without the aid of combat-saddles) but rather with the handle gripped by their teeth and the trigger pulled by their tongue. It wasn’t stylish or even remotely suitable over a combat-saddle, which is why most earth ponies use melee weapons like bats emblazoned with spikes, but a pistol placed in the mouth like a bit worked just as well. I explained it all to her and, once I was done, she placed the gun onto the table and gave me an acknowledging nod. That was when she showed signs of being tired, she stretched her body out and belted a rather vocal yawn.

“Look you get some sleep, I’ll stay up and keep watch”. I placed a hoof on her shoulder, she smiled in response.

“Won’t you be tired though? I saw how hard that stallion kicked you! Shouldn’t you rest too?” Her smile turned into a frown, her care for my own tiredness and my well-being was irrelevant though.

“Look, Essay, I’ve had too much sleep recently, I’m sure I’ll be fine if I stay up for one night”. I jested with her, she laughed with me but failed to realise the seriousness of the situation I had joked about. Though I’m sure she wouldn’t have laughed if I had told her I’d been dead for eight days. She did, however, agree to sleep whilst I kept watch, which was relieving. A pony her age shouldn’t be strife with worry about whether or not she would wake up the next morning, and I sure as Tartarus wasn’t going to let her trust in me go in vain.


***


Once she had fallen asleep, I pulled out the first-aid kit that was stowed away inside my saddlebags, I unhinged the case and levitated out the magical bandages inside. I sharply inhaled as I began to wrap the bandages around my torso, pulling my ribcage tight, which caused a sharp pang of pain to shoot through me making my breathing shallow and laboured, but - according to my pipbuck - the bandages had already begun to heal my cracked ribs. 

As I healed, I moved one of the chairs in front of the windows and stared out into the moon-bathed landscape of sandy hills and burned rocks. I levitated my 9mm pistol out of its holster and kept it in my levitation field the whole time. If something moved for the cabin, I would shoot it, because no pony was going to hurt another hair on Essay’s head if I had something to say about it. Even if it meant putting myself in harm’s way, I welcomed it, in fact, it wasn’t as if I was a stranger to having madponies aiming weapons at me.

The room was silent, bar the gentle snoring of the small olive mare cuddled up by the fire, which continued to crackle into the dead of night. Outside, I could make out the faint sound of crickets chirping and the undeniable howl of a coyote. I leant back into the chair I was sat on, the warm velvet cradled my neck and cushioned my aching body. It would’ve acted as an ideal pillow had it not reeked of ancient cigarette ash and nicotine. Not even the end of the world could save the gorgeous fabric furniture from a lifetime of smelling like a chimney, not to mention the unmistakable stench of a thousand-year-old whiskey that had clearly been spilt onto the fabric, if the pony who lived here some 200 years ago wasn’t a total slob, then I would have, without-a-doubt, fallen asleep.

I let out a pained gasp as I shifted in the chair. Despite knowing what keeping watch meant, I still hated sitting still for so long. I opened my pipbuck’s interface and scrolled across to the files saved onto it. There was always a note left for the ponies who inherited it. Words from my ancient family members. Even one from my mother addressed to me. I read it quietly to myself with the hum of my pipbuck and the fire crackling in the background:

“To my daughter, Express,

I’m sorry I won’t be around much in your life. Shortly after I brought you into this world I was diagnosed with dementia. I write this to you as a mother to a young filly, but I imagine you won’t read this until you’re all grown up, I wish I could see that, but I couldn’t let you and your father suffer with caring for my deteriorating condition. Take care of your father for me, you’ll grow up to be someone incredible.

Love, your mother”

I swallowed my emotions as I read my mother’s message to me. It wasn’t the first time I had read this, but my feelings about the words hadn’t changed. I wiped my eyes and shook my head. My mother was sick and she knew it would kill her eventually, but to spare my father and I the pain of watching it, she took her life. I was very young when it happened and I didn’t understand why it happened. At first, my father had tried to tell me that raiders had broken into our abode and murdered her, but, when I was about ten years old, when I earned my cutie mark on a paper route I took up to make a few bits, he told me the truth. That was when I first read my mother’s message. 

My E.F.S. pinged on my pipbuck, I frowned as I saw a red marker appear on it, interrupting my wallowing thoughts about my parents. I stared out of the window, the sky was still lit up from the moonlight, yet I couldn’t see anything. I continued watching the dunes obscuring the view opposite the house, whatever was out there was using the dunes as cover. I considered waking up Essay but decided against it, I was sure whatever it was wouldn’t be too much trouble. The red marker was unmoving, which seemed wrong. Taintscorpions don’t wait when they smell food and Tatzelwurms were constantly moving just under the sands, so who was out there?


***


I continued watching the window and my E.F.S., if anypony came out of hiding, I would be ready to fight them. I saw a second and third marker appear on my E.F.S. Shit. One against one was enough to handle, but three against one? Those were odds I wasn’t feeling comfortable with. That’s when I saw a figure emerge from over the hill. I could make out that they were dressed in red cloth with studded leather covering their body. Their face was covered by a brown rag, but the mane was unmistakably notable. It was striped, black-to-white and went down their neck in a mohawk. They were a Zebra scout, and more wouldn’t be too far behind. I ducked under the window, making sure I was no longer visible inside the house. I then scurried along the floor and extinguished the fire. Essay stirred from her sleep and asked me what was wrong. I quickly hushed her with a hoof over her mouth and listened carefully. I could hear hoofsteps in the sand around the house, my pipbuck was displaying about seven or eight red markers now. I swallowed hard, my mouth began to dry and my breathing, though laboured, became heavier, forcing my bandages to tighten over my ribcage - the temptation to cough was difficult to overcome.

I bit my lip from worry, hoping that they didn’t notice the smoke from the chimney or even me sitting in plain view of the window. I heard two of them sit by the front door, they were talking, begging even. I recognised their voices, it was Applesack and Marble from before. Looks like they were found camping in the desert. I heard one gunshot, the bullet shot through the door and bookshelf, dust and blood sprayed through it. I tried to hold my own breath, still living on the hope that our presence inside the house wasn’t already known. I knew what the Zebras did to mares and not only did I not want that life, but I certainly did not want that for Essay. I could hear Marble struggling against her own captors, she was kicking and screaming, fighting against a Zebra who I heard laughing. I closed my eyes, wishing that I didn’t have to hear a pony screaming for their freedom but there was no avoiding it. They weren’t like bad neighbours who you could tell to keep the noise down. I heard one of the Zebras shout in pain, followed by multiple shots from a gun. A couple of them passed through the wall with the same spray of blood and dust as before.

“The crazy bitch bit me!” One of the Zebras exclaimed after the bullets had finished firing and the commotion had stopped, his language was colourful and his accent was foreign. It was a stallion’s voice, and I didn’t want to think about what she had bit.

“It’s fine, plenty more plundering to do when we take this land from the New Equestrian Society!” The words came from a particularly deep voice, yet it obviously was that of a mare's. They treated their own mares with respect, probably because they knew necromancy if they even dared to threaten a Zebra mare she could have conjured up a curse to make their life a living hell.

“Any of you see that shape in the window when we came up over that dune?” My heart jumped to my throat and my breath fell from my mouth, a haunted breath brimming with angst and uncertainty, the kind of breath a pony takes when the class bully calls out their name. I closed my eyes tight and whispered an apology to Essay, yet, I continued to hope that they wouldn’t look inside the house, I clung to some small shred of optimism that we would be okay. Essay was shaking, she was clearly just as scared as I was.

“You were seeing things, this house is about as empty as his head!” The mare spoke, and a stallion disapproved of her words. My eyes shot open, if this mare was really convinced that the other Zebra was seeing things then perhaps my hope wasn’t in vain. That’s when I heard their hoofsteps in the sand walking away from the door. My pipbuck confirmed that they were moving on too as their markers began to move north - thankfully not west. I removed my hoof from Essay’s mouth and fell back onto my haunches, amazed that we were even still alive. Essay on the other hoof was still in shock from what she just heard.

“Were those... Zebras?” Her voice shook from nerves, as did the rest of her body. Her ears had fallen flat against her head and her bottom lip quivered. I nodded, unable to speak due to my own shock. She stared vacantly at the blood-spray on the floor by the door, I didn’t know what was going through her mind, but what was going through my mind was all the horrible things they would have had us do had they caught us. I shook my head, attempting to clear the thoughts poisoning my mind.

“Essay?” She turned to look at me as I called her gently, her eyes were teared up, “Come here”. I held my hooves out, offering her a hug, she clearly needed one. She dove into my hooves and tightened her own around me, I didn’t even care about the pain that exploded from my bruised and broken body as she crushed me, I just cared about her safety. 


***


In the morning, I awoke, cuddled up to Essay, it was cold last night - and she probably felt safer by being close to me. I took my time to gently move the olive coated mare from off my hindquarters without waking her up, her cutie mark stood out to me as I shifted her and her uniform rose up her body. It was a padlock surrounded by three golden stars, I smiled, her cutie mark confirmed her prideful gloating about being the best in the academy. Still, I was shocked to think that her parents weren’t proud of her? If she were my relative, I’d be proud.
The concept of having somepony I was close to, like a relative or a friend, wasn’t a new thought in my mind, I’d been practically parentless throughout my life and as for friends, you don’t get many opportunities as a courier to stop and make any. I stared at Essay, her breathing was almost silent, comparable to a whisper from the lips of a lover the morning after a passionate night; except, that was a metaphor lost here, we had no connection like that, unless I considered getting the wind kicked from me in view of her whilst we were tied up and held at gunpoint a connection. Besides, I’d only ever been in a relationship once, though, it only lasted a week, she tried to convince me to stay but I took my work as a courier seriously. We never kept in touch—

“Stop letting your thoughts wander girl”. I shook my head with a harsh whisper, killing my trailing thoughts. After coming within several feet of being found by Zebras, now was not the time to get lost on a thought train I would unlikely get off before the morning was over.

I gathered my saddlebags, which I had stored over by the desk where Essay left her revolver, I used the time that the young mare remained asleep to check my inventory. I spoke aloud with a murmur, “A bit short on food, but I can make this last in the…” I checked my pipbuck’s marker for the remainder of my journey to the N.E.S. Outpost, “half a day’s journey I... no, we have left. Once we’re there I can just purchase food from the caravaners who make their trips to the Outpost. As for ammo, I am… fucked, I have very few bullets left to protect myself and Essay with. I have enough shots to last two maybe three gunfights? Definitely need to make it a priority to buy some of that, or I might as well start trotting about shouting boom boom at anypony who has less than kind intentions”. My ears drooped with frustration, I was running low on caps, ammo and food. With a long sigh, I pulled my saddlebags over my back and woke Essay up, we needed to get moving if we wanted to make as much ground as possible before the heat of the sun became too unbearable.

Essay rubbed her eyes wearily as she sat up from her slumber, a dreary yawn tore her mouth agape and fell off her tongue, much like the words that she attempted to utter during it. “Why are we getting up this early?” She complained, with her eyes squinted, like I used to when my father would wake me up every day for the paper route I worked, “The sun has barely risen!” I shook my head and dropped her revolver in front of her. She grumbled as she bit ahold of the handle. “You didn’t anfer my queftion”. She rolled her eyes as I tried not to giggle at her sudden lisp, “Juft anfer me!” She frowned as she yelled, her lisp ruined any part of it that was startling, it just made me laugh more.

“I woke you up this early because we need to get moving if we want to make it to the N.E.S. Outpost before sundown today”. I wiped a tear away from my eye as I spoke through my laughter. In reaction to this, Essay huffed and walked towards the door, where she stood and sulked, which was just as funny to me as she sounded with a lisp.

Upon composing myself, I picked up the bookshelf covering the door with my magic, shifted it out of the way and pushed it open. The sand and the sun silently flooded the room, blinding both Essay and I. With a wince, we stepped out of the cool refuge of the building and into the scorched embrace of the desert. The body of Applesack laid flat against the sand, the blood that would’ve pooled beneath him had long since dried and been absorbed into the ground, leaving the sand beneath him dark brown, almost tar-like, his body would lay out here until scavengers picked his corpse to the bones. The mare, Marble, had been dragged around the building, where the Zebra’s had… other intentions for her. Had she not been a fighter, we would’ve had to have listened to it. The thought of it made me sick. I caught Essay staring at their bodies, she had gone slightly pale at the sight. I put a hoof around her shoulder and escorted her away from the building that could have been our graves.


***


After an hour of walking, Essay began to drag behind me, she seemed bothered by something, like the sights and sounds of the night before had perturbed her in some way - nor did I blame her if they did - I called to her in an attempt to gauge what was plaguing her, but she didn’t reply. She dragged her hooves through the sand, gouging lines through it, forming small trenches behind her and, in extension, me. I called again but still I received no reply. I sighed and allowed myself to fall into a world of my own, much like my companion of circumstance had.

I stared off into the horizon, the dunes appeared to try and reach for the sky, lovers separated by fate; according to ancient pony mythology anyway. The pony god of the earth and the goddess of the sky were in love, or so the stories claimed, but the pony god of the Sun, the goddess of the sky’s husband, found out and separated them and ever since then the earth has forever tried to reach his lover. I chortled at the thought, gods and goddesses; there was no such thing. The ponies before the Great War believed that two ponies, princess Celestia and Luna, were like goddesses and owned the sun and the moon (respectively) and, ostensibly, raised and lowered them when the time was right, which was clearly not true since Celestia and Luna, the reigning princesses during the war, were gone and the sun and moon remained to function as intended. I found myself laughing at the thought that maybe these same ponies considered Celestia - who they believed to be some goddess of the Sun - to be the pony who banished the earth and sky to separation.

“— all alone with no-pony who loves you?” A small, raspy voice interrupted my tactless thoughts which distracted me from the silence of Essay. A moment of realisation struck me as I considered the words I’d heard.

“I, uh, sorry did you say something?” I fumbled with my words as I turned heel to look at the young mare following in my tread.

“Yeah, I um… Do you ever feel all alone with nopony who loves or cares for you?” Her words were reserved, dissipated by the sands which she spoke into as she stared at the ground. As I thought about my response, Essay ran a hoof through her mane, leaving flecks of sand behind, which caught the sun’s light at just the right angle, making it seem like she had sequins adorning her mane.

“Well, I guess I do,” I cleared my throat as I put a hoof around her and continued walking towards the marker on my pipbuck, “but I don’t have time for love, too busy taking care of helpless mares like yourself”. I gave her a brazen wink and a chuckle, though her lack of a laugh (or any response) was unsettling. I sighed and stopped once again, staring into Essay’s eyes as I spoke, “What’s bothering you, S?” Using a nickname she reserved for her friends felt strange like I was acting a bit forward, but her reply assured me she didn’t mind.

“When you asked about my parents before? I didn’t speak, I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t sign up for the academy, I was left there as a foal. I don’t know if my parents are or would be proud of me since I’m an...orphan”. She shifted her gaze away from my own, her candy-pink eyes had begun to leak, tears drained from them and ran down her cheeks. I understood now why she seemed so distant before, nopony had ever shown her care. Just military training, corporal punishment and harsh orders, the fact that I had taken her into my protection that night, the night she had been taken hostage, probably broke something in her; gave her something to reflect on like a point of reference on how little affection she had been given in her life. I thought that if I told her about my parents it may have helped her, so I did. Perhaps she would have known that being an orphan wasn’t something she was alone with, as I too was one. I didn’t know if it helped, but she cracked a smile upon hearing of my own past.

After our heart-to-heart, she spoke of a nearby town where her commanding officer was stationed, she called it Rutford and mentioned that she needed to receive her next orders and to tell her what happened at her first job. I agreed to take her there since she recalled it being close to the Outpost. She marked its approximate location onto my pipbuck’s map and thanked me for being kind enough to rescue her, and for teaching her how to use a gun without a combat-saddle, as well as offering her my words of comfort. Things she didn’t need to thank me for, I’d like to think that somepony would do the same for me.

According to my pipbuck, the walk to Rutford was about six hours and, after sharing an apple with Essay, we set off. Essay walked on for hope that her time as an N.E.S. Security pony wasn’t over, and I trotted on; hoping some pony knew where my elusive murderer had wandered off to.
> Chapter 3 - The Delivery
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	We ascended above the town of Rutford, stood atop a large sand dune like a pair of unwitting refugees seeking haven in the town below. The six hour journey across a scorching desert had taken up most of my remaining supplies of food (but thanks to my flask, I still had water to spare). The journey was our everest and, now that we had arrived, we could rest; perhaps I could haggle for some spare fruit and vegetables from the aforementioned N.E.S. stationed there, though my skills at bartering left much to be desired, as my cutie mark suggested, I was only good at giving other ponies their mail.

Thankfully, we hadn’t encountered any reason to use our guns and waste precious ammo over the course of the trip, Essay perked up after our chat earlier, despite this, she had voiced concern over how her conversation with her superior would fare, I tried my best to reassure her several times but she didn’t seem to believe me.

As we stood atop the sandy hill, the sun burning overhead, we stared down into the town, the scathing light gleamed off the slated roofs of the dull-grey buildings below; ruined edifices encased the few structures that remained standing and wholly intact, it was a haven of shelter surrounded by reminders of how close the world came to total destruction. 

My pipbuck pinged on my wrist, notifying me of the new location. I smiled and considered all the ponies who were in the town below living a life that very nearly didn’t happen. In a way, we all had something in common. My ancestors and, in extension, I, were sheltered by Stable-Tec - a company that took it upon themselves to provide shelter (the Stables) to ponies on the chance that the Great War did break out into a cataclysmic event that could wipe out all life across Equestria (which it did) - and here we see these ponies living in shelters built by the ponies of old to provide warmth and safety to anypony who stayed in them, sure the difference is the homes the ponies in the town below stay in weren’t built for the sole purpose of protecting them from hellfire that rained from the sky, but it’s a comparison worth noting in this world of ‘them vs us’, a pony-eat-pony mantra that had seated itself upon the discourse of ponies, Griffons and Zebras alike.


***


Essay was staring down at the N.E.S. encampment below, anticipation was rife on her face, her eyes darted in her sockets - small jerking motions - left-to-right (from the town to the military compound) which made her trepidation about her upcoming chat with her superior all too clear. “What if she discharges me on grounds of incompetence? What if she demotes me from security pony to something even more dangerous…? Like a patrolpony!” She jigged on the spot, her hooves helplessly splashed into the sands below as she did her anxious dance. Her coat shined with sweat from the heat (and possibly the anxiety), her mane, that once was tied into a neat ponytail that strung out the back of her security cap, now hung off her shoulder, tousled and limp, the hairband holding her hair up had long since been removed. I chuckled at the scenarios that vexed her mind.

“Look, think about this logically, if she discharges you then you can just come with me - be my guardpony,” I shot her a wink, she smiled with a grin that sat between joy and angst, “and if she doesn’t discharge you, then why would she give you a more dangerous job? If she thought you were incompetent before with a security job, then she isn’t going to put you in a position where incompetence will get other ponies killed too”. Her smile declined and receded back to her natural expression; a wide-eyed, blank gaze and a small frown that wreathed the corners of her lips. My words may have resonated with her, if that were true, she certainly didn’t show it. I put a hoof around her, the sweat built up behind her neck, from under her mane, dampened my leg, “Let’s just go down there with our chins held high and our strut flawless, and see where the moment takes us”. With a gentle pat on the back, I began to descend the hill - with a sort of tumble and slide as opposed to any flair I attempted to maintain.

Once I had slid to the bottom of the hill, the coarse sand had ground the frog of my hooves raw, leaving them burning from the heat and also from the sanding they had received. I turned to watch Essay attempt the descent as pain seethed through me, leaving me biting my lip and speechless. Essay, on the other hoof, seemed to had mastered the way in which a pony should walk down a sand covered dune without causing her hooves to feel as though they had just been sanded down like somepony had attempted to remove paint from a wall. Oh, how I hated sand sometimes. 

From the bottom of the dune, the town of Rutford appeared to be no more than a graveyard of buildings and cobbled roads that had long since been devoured by the desert. Pieces of rebar and concrete shot up from the earth, ponymade stalagmites of whites, greys and browns. The sand beneath flickered under the beaming sun, the hot air that rose from the sands danced in a visible, yet indiscernible, shimmer; warping the light behind it, making the desert appear to move and twist in ways that sometimes resembled shapes of other ponies. Often the shapes appeared to be a stream or a lake. These mirages faded away almost as soon as they had materialised; the phenomenon left my head swollen with thought - and a touch of anxiety - impossible ideas that one of those shapes could easily have been a real pony, that was watching us, made me feel uneasy.

The rubble cracked and collapsed without warning as we walked through the grave of an ancient town, the clop of our hooves on the dilapidated, cobbled roads under the superficial layer of sand echoed across the field of debris. Up close, it appeared that the ponies of this town used these ruined constructs as a kind of wall and getting lost in the concrete wall of detritus was easy; with no clear sign of where the exit was, we had no choice but to aimlessly wander amongst the field of mirages and shattered homes from a world long forgotten. 

Amongst the ruins, there was evidence that ponies still lived in these dwellings right up until the bombs dropped, skeletons of ponies lay strewn about in the sand that became their gravesite; one skeleton hung, limp and lifeless, from a pole of black rebar that once acted as a structure to a long destroyed building, it may have once been the home of the skeleton skewered atop it. I couldn’t imagine the fear that struck these ponies, it would have been like lightning from an angered god when the balefire ignited their homes, swallowing them and their families in a fireball of spite and vitriol, a war that didn’t have anything to do with them; yet they paid the ultimate sacrifice.

The charred bones of ponies and houses left the already tense atmosphere of the city of rubble around Rutford all that more unnerving, though the thought had occurred to me that perhaps maybe there might have been some useful loot to find in the collapsing structures, a thought process I imagined my father would have been on board with. One such house that caught my eye appeared to have an intact safe sat under an exposed desk that was visible from a hole where one of the four walls - that would have completed the building - should have been.


***


I peeked my head into the ruined apartment, studying the integrity of the roof that still sat precariously on the remaining walls like a hat atop the head of a drunk. The struts that ran along the ceiling creaked under the unsupported weight, the sound created by the stressed wooden beams made my ears droop back as I stepped into the dangerously unstructured and unknown home, it was like stepping into the epitome of claustrophobia - a crushing darkness and a tight space juxtaposed against the lifting light and freedom of the desert outside. I hoped and prayed that I wouldn’t regret this decision. Essay refused to come inside with me, she said she would rather take her chances with a Taintscorpion than go in, I considered it a fair point seeing as I didn’t really like my chances that the roof would stay above my head long enough for me to get in, loot the safe and get out, but try my chances, I did.

Upon entering the building, the walls that remained enveloped me, I could smell the putrid air of a sepulchre like many ponies had died and decayed in this very room. I put a hoof out in front of me and my step was greeted with a loud crunch, my stomach churned at the sound and a shiver of disgust crept up my spine. I sparked up a lumination spell from my horn to inspect what I just stepped on (I wish I hadn’t). The spinal column of a skeleton was underhoof, specifically, under my hoof, it had snapped under the weight of my step, the fragments of bone pressed into my hoof, which I had to pry out before they caused any damage. I gagged at the feeling and at the thought that the bones of a pony had been fragmented and lodged into my hoof and, as I looked around the room, I saw five more skeletal remains on the floor, blackened and charred from the fires that engulfed and ate away at their body tissues and organs, which explained the smell that lingered in the room. I was about to take another step forward, towards the safe I saw sat under the desk - now glistening with a sickly reflection of my magic - when I saw the light from my horn reflect off something metal on the floor. I bent down and examined it and thank you, dear caution, as my hoof sat uncomfortably close to the pressure plate of a primed bear trap. 

“What the fuck is wrong with some ponies!?” I whispered harshly to the skeletons and darkness around me as if they would sit up and respond. Somepony clearly saw this safe before me, failed to get into it and booby-trapped it with a bear trap, why? What sort of mentality is ‘if I can’t have it then anypony dumb enough to go digging around here will lose their leg’? I could feel a touch of resentment boiling up inside of me at the thought that somepony could be so selfish, my biggest flaw; overestimating the kindness of wasteland ponies.

I took a breath and carefully lifted my hoof from out of the range of the angular, serrated vices of the bear trap and put it down just to the left of it. After that near fiasco, I took the time to look around the house turned tomb - turned death trap - that I found myself traipsing through. The bear trap I had nearly lost my hoof to wasn’t the only one around. There were three others, all placed parallel to items of interest in the building. To add to the danger, next to each bear trap was a motion sensitive landmine, which would detonate if any of the bear traps were triggered. It was a clever booby trap, which made the situation all the more terrifying.

The three objects that the selfish pony, who rigged the place to blow, deemed interesting was a small terminal in the back right corner of the room, the safe and a cabinet with a seemingly advanced locking system on the left wall; it appeared to be connected to the terminal via cables that ran from the ceiling, the safe also seemed to have a very similar connection to the terminal. I sighed at this realisation. It meant that I would have to dig into the rudimentary knowledge I had on hacking into terminals, it was basic enough that I could, in theory, do it. First of all, I needed to disarm the landmines which filled the room with a desynchronised, yet subtle, beeping, added with the distressed creaking of the rafters; I was beginning to feel ever so slightly pressured.


***


Once the beeping of each landmine had ceased to fill the air with an imminent sense of ‘oh crap there goes my limbs’, I could go about disarming the bear traps that made the already cramped room suffocating. I already knew exactly how to do that, since there were more skeletons in the room then there were bear traps and they wouldn’t mind if I borrowed parts of them.

I gagged as I levitated the snapped spine that I stood on as I stepped into the room, I manipulated it over the pressure plate in the center of the trap and with a violent snap, the trap clamped down onto the spine, leaving it standing vertically in the vice, the teeth chewed through the bone and cracked it. I proceeded to repeat the process with the remaining two bear traps, each loud snag and crack of bone curdled the fluids in my stomach, I came close to vomiting when one of the spines still had a skull attached to it. It stood, staring at me like some creepy nightmare night decoration.

“Fucking creepy house, just became fucking creepier”. I shuddered as the skull’s lower jaw unhinged on the right-side sending another reflux up my esophagus. I placed a hoof over my mouth and swallowed the acid that had come up with my last wretch, I really should work on improving my gag reflex. I breathed heavily as I tried to seize my attention from the pony skull to the terminal. I needed to focus if I had any chance at hacking it.

I approached the ancient machine built by Stable-Tec; it was dust-laden and dim, though it hummed unmistakably with life. In front of it was a small wooden stall, with the bear trap (and spine) behind it. I sat down onto the stall, it creaked and groaned under my weight, it had a slight lean to it and as a result of this. The spine I had used to disarm the bear trap was now a rather uncomfortably stiff and disgusting backrest. I tried to ignore it as best as I could, which was easier said than done. The bone brushed my mane and pressed into my own back like it was trying to use my body as a new host, I wanted to cry out in disgust but I knew that wouldn’t solve anything. I took a deep breath and initiated the startup for the terminal and plugged my pipbuck into it. The screen ran a sequence of bright green welcome messages followed by a page of random numbers and letters, this was where I needed to concentrate. My pipbuck began to organise the letters into comprehensible words and phrases, now all I had to do was find the correct password amongst the seemingly inexhaustible possibilities.

It took me fifteen minutes of starting and restarting the terminal login sequence, but I eventually found the password - Sassy; truly secure passwords these ponies had - upon entering the password and unlocking the terminal, my pipbuck downloaded a message from a pony called ‘Sassy Saddles’, this was not of any significance to me in the moment, I could read it later when I wasn’t on a time limit. I used the terminal to release the actuators that were keeping the safe and the cabinet locked. I saw the safe door click and hang loosely open and as for the cabinet; I heard multiple locks release upon entering the command on the terminal, a proud smile seized control of my muzzle.

I placed a hoof onto the top of the safe and gripped the handle with my magic, “Express, you are such a clever mare, you know that! Your reward for being so clever is…” the safe door swung open in silence, “bloody hairpins!? Oh come on! I risked my flank for this!? Ugh!” I screamed into the darkness, destroying the silence, the noise felt unnatural in the room, the creaking of the rafters seemed to grow louder from my exclamation of anger like the noise disrupted the balance of the roof above me. I took the pins and threw them into my saddlebags, not because I saw any use for them but because I disarmed three landmines, bear traps and hacked a terminal for them! With a reluctant whinny I threw open the cabinet doors and saw a more fitting reward for my hard work, “Oh yeah! That’s more like it!” I levitated a small energy based pistol off a rack at the back of the container, it was small, light and easy to use - the perfect kind of gun for me! Unfortunately, it was battery powered and the pathetic groan it gave me when I attempted to turn it on was life’s way of saying ‘have some more garbage for your collection of hairpins’. I placed it into my saddlebag, slightly disappointed by the loot I found for the effort I put into getting it.

“Are you quite done in there, Express? I was kidding earlier; I would really rather not be standing here if a Taintscorpion happened to come by!” Essay called out with a tiny squeak from the other side of the hole in the wall, her voice was muffled by the concrete between her and I. 

“Yep. I’m done, I’ll be out now S”. I sighed, I’d not felt so defeated in my life - or since I heard about my father’s fate.


***


With a reluctance in my step, I continued escorting Essay towards the N.E.S. barracks that had been erected on the far-right of the town, the continued clop of my hooves on the asphalt below the thin veil of sand echoed off each ruin we passed. Essay tried to tell me that the pistol I had found was an old breeder-cell laser pistol, an extremely rare pre-war weapon that very few ponies ever had, yet it did not cheer me up. Sure, the pistol I found would make a pretty cap amongst the vendors who specialised in weaponry, but I was hoping for something special, like perhaps a gun I could actually use that packed more of a punch than my father’s 9mm Pistol I had inherited. I heaved a heavy sigh of disappointment and frustration into the tepid air. I attempted to convince myself that I didn’t have the knack for scavenging and looting as my father did, after all; I was nothing more than a simple mail-pony.

Essay seemed to become more uncomfortable around me when I held my head lower than the morals of a raider, my melancholic attitude after one shitty haul of loot was stupid, I knew it was; yet I couldn’t talk myself into feeling better. I knew with each step that Essay lagged behind me, I was making her feel more and more negative about talking to her commander; after all, I was the pony who told her we’d walk into that compound with our heads high, yet here I was, feeling defeated after one scavenging run.

I brought my hoof to my forehead, furrowed my brow and dragged my hoof over the frown lines that formed, “S, I’m sorry for seeming so down all of a sudden. I was really hoping there would be something a bit more… useful in that building. I guess it was rather short sighted”. I laughed as I put my hoof back to the floor but I didn’t hear laughter back - or anything for that matter. “S?” I turned around to see why Essay was being so quiet. I found her hiding behind a half-crumbled piece of wall which marked where a home once stood. She had her hoof over her mouth, indicating that I should be quiet, whilst she waved me over with her other hoof. I obeyed and crouched behind the wall, her vexed expression left me feeling like I had missed something. I checked my E.F.S. and saw two red markers moving about; yet I couldn’t see the creatures that they represented.

“I heard somepony moving around in the ruins, one of them shouted - how did you not hear them?” I rubbed at the back of my neck, feeling slightly embarrassed about the lack of attention I had been paying as a result of the mood I had found myself in, I shrugged at her, she sighed at my lackadaisical response, “Do you think it’s the Zebras from the other night?” Her words were laced with worry, a poison of which had began to spread to me.

“It shouldn’t be, they wouldn’t be this close to an N.E.S. barracks!” The logic did nothing to quench the worrisome thirst of dismay that had taken over Essay’s thoughts. She bit the back of her hoof whilst she peeked over the rubbled wall we were hiding behind, looking for something that would make the situation seem less dire. “Stay here, I’ll go and check it out okay? If something happens, fire off your revolver; the noise should be enough to distract them long enough for me to get away or defend myself”. I shot Essay a reassuring wink as I darted past the wall, giving her no time to respond.


***


I approached the ruins of a small cottage; the place my Eyes Forward Sparkle was telling me where the ponies were, their markers had remained still inside. I looked into a low hanging window on the side of the building, the glass had long since shattered and become nothing more than fine sprinkles that glistened in the sun (though they weren’t the kind of sprinkles you’d want to eat). I saw a pony - dressed in a blue and black jumpsuit - a unicorn like myself. He was levitating a bat by his side, it was heavily wrapped in rusted metal chains; he was sat down on a chair watching the door they had entered in. He had a rather pleased smile on his face. The second pony in the room wasn’t visible; they were stood out of the sight of the window or in another room.

It seemed that the Stallion would have been unable to fight at range, which meant I had the advantage over them, if I was even going to engage them in a fight. I had done my job, which was to confirm that they were not the Zebras we saw. As I turned to walk away, I heard a familiar sound - a faint hum - which resonated at the same tone and frequency as my own pipbuck, yet this noise was coming from inside the building, not from my leg.

I quickly peeked back through the window and saw the same pony sitting on the chair wearing a pipbuck on his wrist, only his was displaying a corrupted blue screen (clearly he had no idea how it worked). I saw the second pony now - a mare - she had a dark grey coat with a blonde mane, she too wore a blue and black jumpsuit, though hers was torn in… certain areas; she was sitting on the floor between the legs of the stallion, her back facing to the window, her head planted between the stallion’s legs. It was then that I sank back below the windowframe - no longer looking, no longer needing to - I didn’t have to be a genius to know what a mare would be doing in a pose like that. My mouth set in a hard line, the kind of face one pulls when they witness something that they shouldn’t have.

At this point, I had two options. Option one: Go in and ask that pony why he has a broken pipbuck and interrupt his… special time, or option two: go back to Essay and pretend I never saw any of that. Option one only seemed more enticing because if I could get that pipbuck from his hoof then I could give it to Essay! She would make more use of it then that Stallion anyway; since I had the tools required to fix it. I sighed in the disbelief that I was about to interrupt two ponies in the process of giving (and receiving) fellatio. “I swear, if he points it at me I will shoot it”. I didn’t mean the bat.

I slowly pushed open the door, the quiet, perverse groans of the couple in the cottage were interrupted with a jolt of activity from the happy stallion on the chair, either he saw the door open or he just reached— Bad thought. As I turned the corner on the doorframe of the house, I levitated my pistol from its holster - aiming it - ready to pull the trigger if the circumstance arose. The seated stallion was still getting happily pleasured by the mare as I entered the room and, in a moment of shock and surprise, he quickly attempted to stand up much to the discomfort of the mare who made a very audible gag at the suddenness of his movement. I aimed the gun at him as he levelled his bat by his side.

“Don’t even think about it, happy”. The twitching underneath him was difficult to ignore, it was as if it was winking at me - it made me feel particularly sick, “Make a move at me and I’ll make it so you and your marefriend there will never have one of these close moments again, understand?” I aimed the gun at his crotch, really hoping he gave me a reason to shoot since the sight of it was making me feel ill. The stallion dropped his bat and nodded at me, the threat of me shooting his crown jewels off probably made his insides cry in pain.

“Alright there lassy, let’s not get too trigger happy here, what d’ya want? Ya see us through the window and decided ya want in?” His voice was confident and his accent was unlike the typical one heard around the Griffish Isles - he probably hailed from the neighbouring islands - he held a certain cocky nature that reminded me of a colt who bullied me when I was a filly, he too acted more with his crotch than with his head. I rolled my eyes and reasserted myself.

“By Luna, you’re annoying, if you must know it’s that,” I aimed my gun at his pipbuck briefly before recentering the sights on him, “I want your pipbuck - since you seem more interested in the many ways you can get your dick wet added with the fact that it’s broken tells me I’d find more use for it than you”. He chuckled, a cocky smirk found its way across his muzzle.

“If you’re interested just admit it, plenty o’ me ta go around!” He shot a glance at the mare on the ground, she simply rolled her eyes; clearly not impressed by his arrogant display whilst stood in the sights of a gun. I gagged at his preposition.

“Look, you can either give it to me peacefully, or I can put a bullet between your eyes before you can lift that pathetic bat up to protect yourself and I’ll take it from your cold, dead hooves”. Now I smirked as his smile was wiped away, confidence shot through me like a dart. “Besides, your marefriend looks more fun than you”. I toyed with him, he knew he was screwed (in a way he wasn’t expecting) and there was nothing he could do about it.

“Fine!” He tore the loosely fastened pipbuck off his ankle and threw it at me, I caught it with no effort in my levitation field, “Now can ya piss off?” He ground his teeth in frustration.

“Certainly”. I turned to the mare and shot her wink, she gave me a rather uncomfortable smile in retaliation, it didn’t bother me though; I was only further irritating the stallion in the room.


***


I returned to Essay, she was still hiding behind the wall where I last saw her, her worried expression still sat upon her muzzle claiming it as a throne. Her eyes did light up when I returned though, her smile of perceived security lifted my already high spirits.

“I have something for you”. I spoke with a sing-song inflection to my voice, my excitement grew more as a somewhat puzzled - yet eager - look seized away the throne of angst from her expression. Her browline relaxed, the wreathe of dismay on her lips turned up into a smile; clearly she was excited. I levitated the pipbuck I had procured from the stallion out from my saddlebag and presented it to Essay’s right leg, her eyes glowed from the realisation of what I was showing her.

“This is—” her jaw hung agape.

“Mhm”

“And you’re not messing with me?”

“Why would I be?” I smiled as I clasped the strap over her leg. Her smile beamed wider when I locked it in place with a special key that had also been passed down through the generations in my family. The pipbuck - which once glowed blue due to security reasons - glowed with a white welcome screen (a different Stable must have made the default display white). On the screen, was displayed the name of the Stable this particular pipbuck came from - ‘Stable 111’ - I’d never heard of it. Then came the magic of the pipbuck, using the spells that had been programmed into it by Stable-Tec it was able to instantly generate a health status of Essay whilst also displaying her full name on the details page.

“How does it do all of that?” She gave the pipbuck a confused look-over like a child examining a new toy in amazement. I merely laughed and told her that I would explain it to her at some other time.

As we continued through the maze of Rutford, Essay had been buzzing since I gave her the pipbuck, regularly flicking through the different menus on it; playing and pausing various radio stations within range of the receiver and even jokingly asked me to shoot her in the leg just so she could see the health status work in real-time. “Please! Just one shot in my hoof! You have bandages to fix it!” Her excitement at the possibility of getting shot in the hoof was disconcerting.

“I am not shooting you in the hoof!” I chuckled as I spoke, “Besides, the bandages don’t heal bullet wounds, they’re to be used for bruises, scrapes and cuts”. The matter-of-fact nature of my words made Essay frown, but she accepted that I wasn’t going to be putting a bullet into her. It didn’t stop her giggly attitude though, she had gone from being an angsty teen to a giddy schoolfilly in less than an hour, thankfully, she had cheered up just as we had reached the N.E.S. barracks located outside the town.

We were greeted by a larger than average mare dressed in a heavier looking uniform than what was worn by Essay, instead of a light black armoured jacket; this pony was wearing a metal looking vest with protective guards covering her legs and flank, between each plate of highly protective armour was a thin layer of cloth. The usual insignia of a three-headed lion and the initials of ‘N.E.S.’ emblazoned across the armour was also present. Her mane was short, barely falling further than the pinnacle of her neck, it was dark in colour - much like her coat. Her cold gaze combined with the combat saddle that was pointed towards us at all times was very intimidating, security was definitely not taken lightly within the ranks of the N.E.S.

It only took a few words from Essay to get us into the same tent us her superior, Commander Hawker - another mare - she was older than both Essay and I and she had the battle scars to prove it. She wasn’t wearing the heavier armour of the ponies outside, instead, she was wearing a long coat that brushed the ground when she walked. It was a dusty brown with a high collar, curiously though she was a pegasus - which was quite unseen in the wasteland. Her mane was windswept and stylised to look as large and streamlined as possible, her brick coloured mane with a darker streak spiralling down it stood out from her orange coat which glowed from under the almost colourless fabric of her duster; yellow eyes beaded out from under the shadow of her mane. With a voice of complete disinterest she addressed our presence; “What do you want? Can’t you see that I’m far too busy to deal with two wastelanders looking for handouts?” There was a gruffness to her voice, it sounded sore and rough like somepony who regularly smoked. “Well? You just going to stand their cock-eyed and dumbfounded? Out with it!” her disinterested tone had turned to anger and impatience.

“S-sorry to bother you, ma’am,” Essay stuttered as she spoke up, taking a step towards the pegasus who held rank over her, “I’m Essay Strive from Quarry Security”. She shied away when her commander interrupted her.

“Quarry Security? Mind explaining why in Celestia’s name you’re here and not over there?” Commander Hawker pursed her lips and leant in to Essay’s face, psyching her out - typical of military types.

“W-well you see…” Essay’s stuttering resulted in a vicious scowl from Hawker, “On my first night I inspected a noise I heard from the dynamite storage shed and two ponies managed to ambush and take me hostage, they also… made off with the last of the dynamite”. Essay hid her face from her now very angry superior, whose own face had become so corrupt with anger that she was noticeably biting her tongue. Her yellow eyes - which would seem inviting on anypony else - were fixed into a permanent glower. The room was silent with nothing but the uncomfortable cough from a guard by the door and exalted sighs that tore from the nostrils of Hawker.

She turned her back on us and went back to the table where she had been sat when we entered the room, I felt the need to speak up and explain my role in everything. “I’m Express by the way, I’m a courier. I actually once did a delivery for General Horseshoe, he gave me free pass through N.E.S. controlled areas and barracks so…” I cleared my throat, my words received no other response than an arrogant flick of her tail, “I, also, was the one who rescued Essay here from her capturers”.

“What do you want? A reward?” Hawker seemed to have a habit of cutting ponies off before they finished talking, “Thank you for bringing me an incompetent recruit who couldn’t even handle a simple security detail”. Her initial sarcasm quickly turned into blatant insults. She turned back to face us, her red-faced grimace hadn’t budged. “Tell you what, Essay. I’ll give you one more chance. You can go be the apprentice to an officer out by ‘Novac’,  the run-down hotel where ponies ended up living. It’s on it’s way to New Trottingham, so you shouldn’t have trouble finding it. I’ll even let your friend here escort you,” Essay smiled at the thought of travelling with me again, I smiled back at her, “On one condition”. I cocked my head as I noticed Hawker’s mouth curl into a sinister smile. “You said you’re a courier right? Well, I have a message for you to deliver”. I really didn’t like where this was going.


***


I was escorted by two N.E.S. guards to the front gates of the town of Rutford, the gates were badly weathered and heavily rusted, they appeared to be more for show than any kind of security. I sighed as I was pushed beyond the gates. My ‘message’ that I needed to deliver in order for Essay to receive her superior’s permission to travel with me was a bullet (or many if the word of Commander Hawker was anything to go by). The town was overrun by escaped convicts from the local correctional facility - a fancy name for a prison. My job was to clear them out. Sounded simple enough, except, I’d never really shot at a pony before. I’d killed countless radroaches, a few taintscorpions and one or two overgrown mole rats but I’ve only ever delivered letters to ponies, not delivered them to their demise.

I swallowed hard, I felt sick. Standing at the front gates, I clutched at my pistol, the magic field glowing around it washed me in a sickly green hue - perfectly encapturing my feelings. I glanced around, checking for these ponies hiding amongst the buildings surrounding me, the rubble wall trapping me in there with them. To my left, I saw a large office building built of red brick with large windows facing onto the street I was stood on; the roof had collapsed long ago as did enough of the wall on the top floor so that I could make out what looked like a pony’s tail poking out around it and my E.F.S. confirmed this with a red marker - along with many others around the town. In a blind panic, I quickly crept over to a small gazebo that was sat opposite me. The gazebo was enough to hide me from the pony in the building but if anypony was to come onto the street I was hiding on it would’ve turned into a very one-sided gunfight - I needed to get off the street and take cover in a building and fast.

From the gazebo, I saw a small building with a neon sign hanging crooked from the front, most of the glow from its lights had faded but I could make out the name of the store, “Griffish Mail - a post office? Wouldn’t that just be irony at its greatest, look at the scared little mailpony running into the post office”. I whinnied at the idea, sure it seemed like it was the least secure place to work out a plan of attack but it would do and, since my E.F.S. was showing the markers elsewhere, it seemed like the ponies were avoiding the post office. 

Perfect.

I peeked out around my hiding spot to see if the pony in the building was watching the street, thankfully, he was not. I took my chance. I quickly galloped from the middle of the street across to the small post office next to the larger building the watcher-pony was in. As I galloped, I could hear how loud my hoofsteps were, it made me panic. I was neither subtle nor sneaky, everypony and their grandmares could hear me and this post office probably won’t stay so quiet for long. I made it to the door and, with one swift movement, I burst through it - making yet more noise. As soon as I was through, I quickly pushed the first heavy looking object I could see over the door which happened to be an overturned counter. Once the door was barricaded, I fell onto my haunches and tried to slow my breathing down. “Okay, you’re okay, nothing to worry about!” I checked my E.F.S - the markers were moving towards the street I was just on, “Aha! Nothing to worry about! Not like there’s convicted criminals outside on the street right now! You’re fine!” If my panicked whispers of reassurance did anything it was make me panic more.

I glanced around the post office, looking for something that I could use. Some item of use! All I found was a small kitchen knife, it was sharp at least. “Oh joy! If I get really desperate I could just run at them with this!” I checked my E.F.S. again, “all… twelve… of them”. I wanted to cry, I’d honestly never been so stressed in my life. How in pony’s sake did soldiers willingly walk into combat?! I looked up from my pipbuck and passed the glass counter I was leaning against for support when I noticed the hole in the wall leading straight into the building where that watcher-pony was. A small panic set in, especially when I could make out the sounds of a pony’s hooves slowly descending a stairwell - which was all I could see from the hole in the wall. I had to hide and fast! I, once again, darted my eyes around the room, looking for a cabinet to hide in, or a locker! But there was no-place to hide. All I could think of was ducking under the counter I was leaning on, which is exactly what I did. Once my pipbuck confirmed I was hidden, the pony stepped into the room - my heart started racing.

“I heard ya in here! Where’d you go? Did you hide....” he fired off a shotgun round into the small cabinet compartments that were under the mail shelves where all the letters were organised sending letters and wood flying over the room. “Nah, nah nah, you wouldn’t be in there, too small!” His hoofsteps were now on the opposite side of the counter to where I was hidden, or they were. With a grunt he climbed on top of the glass of the counter (which was obviously reinforced) and he began shooting at every possible spot in the room which filled it with explosive light from the barrel and a deafening blast with each squeeze of the trigger. I cowered with my hooves over my head as he emptied his shotgun into the walls and floors around him - missing where I was since he didn’t bother to look directly below him. When I heard the click of his empty shotgun I knew I had to take advantage of the situation, else I might end up like the letters - lifeless and full of holes. I picked up the kitchen knife that I found in my teeth and gripped it tightly. I breathed slowly through my nostrils and  rose from the ground - I held my eyes shut tightly as I did. 

Once I was no longer hiding I knew it was now or never. I opened my eyes again and looked up at the pony on the counter, he was too busy fumbling with his shotgun, trying to reload it, to notice me. I took one last breath, I knew I had to do this silently or every other pony outside would be on me in seconds. Whilst he was still fumbling with the shotgun I climbed onto the counter in front of him. He looked at me and gasped, desperately trying to get the shotgun shell into the gun, but I didn’t give him the chance, I lunged forward and plunged the blade of the knife into his throat. His blood ran freely from the knife and into my mouth - the metallic taste made me feel even more sick than the gurgling sounds coming from the pony as he tried to breathe through the blood now entering his windpipe. That’s when the shotgun fell to the floor. In one quick motion, I sliced the blade out from his throat, spraying the wall in his blood. 

I dropped the knife and began retching, the taste of the pony’s blood in my mouth was still fresh, lingering like the foul taste of rancid water. The pony, whose blood was now quickly emptying onto the floor, let out a guttural, gurgling sound before he collapsed onto the floor; dead. I stared at him in shock, horror and disgust. It didn’t take long before my feelings caught up to me, it also didn’t take long for me to vomit.


***


After the taste of another pony’s blood had been thoroughly and violently ejected from my system, I gathered myself; clutching at my stomach with my hoof as it swelled from the act of emptying itself onto the ground around me I examined the body of the pony I had just killed. His eyes were lifeless and his familiarly blue and black jumpsuit was stained through and soaked with his blood, as was the fur of my coat around my mouth. I gagged again - a dry-heave - simply due to the fact that there was no longer anything left to come up. I picked up the shotgun he had and put it into my saddlebag, ‘I might need this later’ I thought to myself. The room which once housed the smell of old paper and damp was now replaced with the lingering stench of burned up gunpowder and blood; leaving the air tasting of rusted metal and sulfur. I stared at the pockets of the pony’s jumpsuit, where he had been levitating shotgun shells from and if his shotgun was to be useful I’d need some ammo for it. 

Reluctantly, I reached into his pockets, curling my face in disgust as I did. One by one, I began to relinquish his corpse of precious shells, placing them into the pockets on my saddlebag that I kept specially for ammo, it was about the only bit of organising that went into my inventory and even that was chaotic. Once his pockets no longer produced ammo, I patted him down looking for anything else that might have been on hoof when he died. He was soaked with blood and each placement of my hoof on his body dampened it, staining my fur with his blood, another dry-heave rocked my esophagus. I felt like I’d never get used to both killing and looting a dead pony, or to the queasiness I felt whenever I saw the remains of a pony.

Once I was certain I’d looted the pony for everything he had, which was really only the bullets, I stepped out of the post office and into the building where he had come from. The walls on the inside were bereft of colour or wallpaper, revealing nothing but the barebones brick and mortar underneath. I turned my back on the post office where I had taken my first life and checked my Eyes Forward Sparkle as I began climbing the stairs, all the markers of bad ponies had accumulated onto the street outside. “Oh great,” I whispered to myself, “as if my situation needed to be made worse”.

When I reached the top of the stairs, I saw the partially collapsed wall where I saw the first pony (who now lies downstairs). Beside the wall was a rifle with a scope attached to it, along with a small chair where I assumed the watcher-pony would have spent his down time resting. I levitated the rifle toward me and raised it to my eye level where I could easily peer down the green-tinted glass of the rifle scope, I could easily see all the ponies I had to kill for Commander Hawker. The sick feeling in the bottom of my gut had come around again when I reminded myself of that, along with the taste of blood from the throat of the pony who I murdered. I clenched my eyes shut, trying to numb myself to the feeling of killing, trying to coax the tear that had formed in the corner of my eye back, no matter how hard I tried all I could see was the face of the pony I killed as his life drained from the slit in his throat. I opened my eyes again, panting heavily, I took aim at the head of one of the ponies below and, with a whispered apology, I pulled the trigger.

Click.

My heart raced when I heard the gun fail to fire, it was as though I had just been spared a furthered experience of disgust. I inspected the rifle, I could see it had a bolt-mechanism, using my magic, I pulled on the bolt; it did not budge. It was broken, of course it was. I supposed I should have been thankful for that, if it hadn’t been broken, I would have attracted the attention of every single pony down there. I threw the gun aside and sat onto the chair, breathing slowly as sweat poured from my brow. I wiped at it, dampening my hoof, my coat was mottled by with the blood of the first pony I ever killed, I felt disgusting.

I glanced up into the blue sky above, the sun beamed down and kissed my blood-stained cheeks, the wind swept in from over the roofless walls. The air sweeping through my mane was warm yet significantly cooler than the heat that bared down from the sun. I closed my eyes and relished in the cooling fingers of the breeze as they combed through my mane, it helped me calm down. I checked my E.F.S again, the ponies had returned to what they were doing before all the noise I made had attracted them to the street. This was the perfect opportunity to sneak around and get a feel for what I was up against.


***


The sandstorm had stirred up soon after I had moved from my position on the top floor of the building, it gave me perfect cover to move through the streets of Rutford without being seen. Unfortunately, there was a catch to being able to walk like a ghost through a town swarming with ponies who wish to kill me and that was that I couldn’t really see, I was relying on what was visible and the maps of the town that my pipbuck had. I stepped out from the sheltered walls of the first floor of the office building, the wind immediately swept up under my jersey and threw my tail around, the sand whipped at my flank and legs with each lash from the wind leaving me feeling sore from only a few seconds being exposed to the storm. As expected, the visibility outside was poor and I could barely make out a large building in the center of the town, this was probably where all the convicts had gone so I needed to sneak my way inside.

With my eyes squeezed half closed and irritated by the sand, I pressed myself against the wall of the building using it as a guide. I shimmied my way across the wall with one hoof affixed to it, the rough stone grinded against my hoof leaving it feeling raw and sensitive. My eyes were starting to get dry from the sand being thrown around by the desert-storm that had now completely swallowed everything around me. Every breath I took felt coarse, my lungs were being sanded down from the inside out. I let out the occasional dry cough and reminded myself that I needed to get out of this storm else my lungs would suffer irreparably damaged. With that thought, luck had come my way as my hoof skated across a different texture, it was warmer and lighter and produced a small rattle as I put pressure onto it - a door. I grabbed the handle of the door with my magic and pulled it open, surprisingly it wasn’t locked.

Once inside of the large building, I slowly closed the door behind me. The dim conditions inside were difficult to adjust to with the sand clogging up my eyelashes. I rubbed at my eyes, tears from the irritation flowed freely, helping to moisten my eyes but the watery glaze had made adjusting to the dark harder. I could have easily flared up a lumination spell but I was meant to stay unseen. I shook my head, my mane whipped around violently, spraying sand around filling the room with the soft splash of sand spattering across hollow buckets and concrete walls. Eventually, my eyes stopped watering which returned to me my unobscured vision, the darkness quickly settled and shapes began to clarify as my eyes quickly adjusted.

I was stood in a dark corridor, two doors were obvious to me - one on my right which had light flooding out from under the crack between the frame and the floor and one at the end of the hallway obstructed by what seemed to be a pony with their back turned to me. “Bloody storm. I heard those shotgun blasts from the Post Office and Guts doesn’t pointless fire off his shotgun”. My heart jumped into my throat when I heard the pony muttering to himself. “I know he had an Ace problem but I know for a fact that he hadn’t taken any. I was the one who took it from him”. The barely clear shape of a pony at the end of the corridor appeared to shift, the door opened at the end of the corridor and soon the shape was no longer there.

‘Great, so I don’t even get a second to plan,’ I thought to myself, wondering how in Equestria I was going to pull this off. I levitated the knife I found in the Post Office out from my saddlebag and examined it, the knife was still dripping in blood, no way was this going back into my mouth. I carefully made my way down the corridor, mindful of the clutter that I could disturb which would give away my presence. The darkness made the angst of killing again all that more stressful. I was nearly at the door when the pony who’d left through appeared back in the doorway, he looked down the corridor and saw me standing there with the knife floating beside me.

Oh fuck.

With his mouth, he reached for something that was holstered on his right side, I panicked and threw the knife at him (with my eyes closed). I flinched when I heard the knife dig into something hard with a crack. I expected the knife to have missed completely and was anticipating a gunshot but there was nothing, only the heavy thud of a pony falling to the floor. I opened my eyes and stared in shock at the body of the pony with a knife stuck out of his head like the horn of a unicorn. My jaw slowly fell open, I knew I threw the knife hard but I didn’t think I threw it hard enough to penetrate the skull of a pony. I stepped over his body and attempted to pull the knife out from his skull. I had no luck, it was sunk deeper than the disgust that rose from my stomach. Instead, I gave his body a once over and took the Cleaver that he was reaching for, he had no other items of use on him, other than a note from ‘Guts’ the pony who I had killed in the Post Office. It was a thank you note, it read: 

“Thanks for keepin’ me clean Hash, I’d be a mess if it weren’t for ya. Love ya! ~Guts”

Cute, they were a couple. Were being the key word there since I had killed them both. I wished I hadn’t read the note since it made me feel worse than I already was. “I’m sorry”. I whispered to the body of the pony the note implied was called ‘Hash’ before I made my way into the room at the end of the corridor. It opened out into a foyer with a staircase running on the right side, it seemed to lead to a balcony which overlooked the other room the corridor I entered into was connected to. I looked at my E.F.S., all the red markers were collected in the room which the balcony overlooked - along with a couple of amber markers.

Curiosity led me to creep up the staircase, each creak of the boards led me to cringe, fearing that somepony would hear them and get suspicious. By the time I was up the stairs the creaking floorboards hadn’t ceased, only now I was above where all the unfriendly ponies were gathered so each groan of worn boards was that much more suspicious. I approached the balcony dubiously with light steps and minimal board creaking, I gazed over the precipice of the second floor and saw what seemed to be a large hall filled with floodlights and ponies standing around drinking and laughing, except for the two ponies who were tied up in the far-right corner of the room - they definitely didn’t seem too happy. I would’ve continued watching if it wasn’t for the creaking that began to climb the stairs behind me.

I turned around and saw a unicorn aiming a rifle at me, a sinister smile curled her mouth, a disturbing look of pleasure emanated from her eyes as she spoke; “What do we have here?” Her voice was quiet, obviously she didn’t want to alert everypony to my presence - yet. I cowered towards the wall behind me, “You thought you could sneak in here? Steal the supplies from us and get out?” Oh, if only she knew what I was really doing here then she wouldn’t have hesitated to kill me. I shook my head, she moved closer to me, closing the gap between us quicker than I had expected. “Come here, empty your saddlebags and then I’ll kill you. But only after I’ve had fun with you”. Her voice was venomous and sickeningly playful, it left me feeling uncomfortable. I shook my head again, she moved closer and was now within range of the my cleaver which I had left on the floor before I cowered to the far wall. “I said—” I didn’t let her finish her sentence as I used my magic to levitate the cleaver below her and sent it plunging into her throat, silencing her. I took my chance to tell her a few words of my own.

“If you think I’m here to steal from you then that was far from your first mistake. Your first mistake was taking two innocent ponies hostage, your second mistake was talking to me like some piece of shit you stood in and the last mistake you ever made was wasting your breath and ignoring the cleaver I had left on the floor”. I pulled the cleaver out and took the rifle from the her as she choked to death on her inability to draw a breath from her severed windpipe. The feeling of killing in self-defence and the defence of others was different than killing ponies because I was told to, it felt more dignifying.

I snuck back down the stairs as I examined the rifle I took from the unicorn, it was a semi-automatic battle rifle chambered by .308 rounds with an en-bloc clip, my father taught me a lot about different guns and only ever showed me how to shoot very few. Thankfully, semi-automatic rifles was part of my repertoire of weapons I knew how to shoot. Eight bullets for the rifle, about twelve shotgun shells for the shotgun from Guts and fifteen bullets in the magazine for my 9mm pistol, that was more than enough ammo to help out those poor ponies tied up downstairs. With the current adrenaline fuelled hate for the ponies who tortured innocent ponies, I knew what I would do.

I galloped down back down the stairs and past the body of Hash with my newly acquired rifle floating beside me. I stood by the second door I saw upon entering, the light still filtered through beneath the doorframe. I took a breath. I turned and presented my back hooves to the door. I bucked the door open, swung around and levelled my rifle before I laced a single shot off to the first pony I saw. The rifle rattled as the gas powered chamber sent the bullet launching at the pony’s head. A red mist erupted outwards as it penetrated through the side of his skull followed by the shrapnel of skull and spray of gore from his brain splattered over the wall he was stood adjacent to. I shot off another bullet, the heavy crack of the gas chamber rang through my ears. After the third bullet from the clip was shot I dove behind an overturned table as the other ponies began to fire back.

A cacophony of gunfire exploded around me, the table I used for cover soon resembled swiss cheese as wood splintered around me. I blindly fired off a fourth shot from the rifle, the scream that followed sounded like I wounded some pony. Eventually, the gunfire ceased, they needed to reload their automatic weapons which they so callously sprayed around the room. I took the opportunity to fire off a fifth and sixth shot, moving towards a more intact table as I did, taking out two more of them, leaving me two more rounds and four more ponies. I flipped the new table and ducked behind it when the four remaining ponies began aiming their weapons at me again, the one I was most worried about getting shot by was the unicorn in the back; the three earth ponies stood out in the open were incapable of accurately aiming an automatic weapon whilst using their tongue to pull the trigger.

Once again the explosive, inaccurate and ineffectual gunfire ceased as they reloaded their weapons. I took aim, using my S.A.T.S., and blasted off the final two rounds, sending them catapulting at the unicorn and closest earth pony’s head, sending gore spattering across the wall behind them. The metallic clang of the en-bloc clip ejecting itself was my cue to switch to my pistol, which I did from the cover of the table. One more pitiful attempt at shooting me and this fight would be over, my pistol could hold fifteen bullets in a magazine, more than enough for two ponies. The gunfire ceased once more and jumped out of cover and shot off two bullets for each pony, all four bullets found their target and down they went with a wet thud, their blood - and the blood of the others - pooled around the front entrance where they were gathered. I breathed heavily, the adrenaline coursing my veins left me feeling invincible and the guilt I felt for killing a pony was absent, in a way I was thankful that they were twisted enough to subject innocent ponies to the fear that was not knowing how long they had left to live. I turned to the ponies who were tied up, a mare and a stallion; they were tied up with their backs to each other with a rag stuffed into their mouths as a gag. My magic made quick work of the ropes and the gag.

“Th-thank you so much! You have no idea how much we were hoping for a miracle and here you are!” The mare sung with tears in her eyes, the stallion pulled her close to him for a tight embrace, wishing me his gratitude too, a smile swept over my muzzle, the stress of killing all the criminals in the town fell off me as I received the gratitude of these ponies. “B-but what about our son?” The mare interrupted my moment, my smile turned to confusion. I cocked my head. “Th-they took him away from us! I think I heard one of them mention the hotel across the street… they must have taken him there! Please save our son!” I forced a grin over my face.

“There’s… more of them?” I muttered to myself. I could feel a bead of sweat drip off my brow, “D-don’t worry! I’ll rescue your son!” I feigned confidence with my words, hoping my stutter didn’t destroy their hope. I turned to walk out of the door, the ponies behind me wept tears of joy and worry for their missing son. I wept too with internal conflict; I foolishly imagined that these were the only ponies around and wasted almost all of my ammo and now I was meant to walk into a hotel where there would be more ponies who would kill me at first sight? A thought struck me, why exactly are these ponies who are escaped convicts so hostile? I swallowed my angst and concerns as the door to the sand swallowed world swung open.