Chapter 1: In Our Town

Chapter 1: In Our Town.

“Other ponies argue - do you ever wonder why?”

“...Thirty-two, thirty-three… Thirty-four,” yep, that’s right. This window has thirty-four cracks in it. Just like the last time I counted… Just like the last twenty times I’ve counted this month. It doesn’t ever change! The brown, dirty walls of my home looking the same as always. The same, broken windows forever placed at the front of my shop.

It’s another slow day, which makes sense… I live in a small town, so that means not many ponies live here. We are also out of the way, so not many travelers stop by. This could only mean one thing for me. “Sigh… I’m bored..” I let my head slip from my hoof and crash into the old, dirty desk. A sight I’m all too familiar with. My orange hoof, my white desk, my dusty gold tail not even reaching the floor.

Although, my boredom is technically a good thing for the town. If I’m doing nothing, then that means I’m not needed. Which means no pony is hurt! It’s a bitter thought to try and cheer myself up from the everlasting boredom that’s my life at the moment. With how large the Equestrian Wasteland is danger can be found anywhere, so I’m just glad that it’s not here.

I hardly even noticed that I was just staring at the next window, subconsciously counting in my head. One… Two… Three… Fou-

My door swung open, with two of the more elder mares trotted into my...Lovely home. Finally, something was happening, and it wasn’t an emergency!

“Oh, Dusty Smoke! Snipe Strike! You’re traveling together today? What’s the occasion?” Always have to act at least semi-professional when you speak to clients… Even if they’re not here for anything medical related. They looked strangely similar to each other, both green earth ponies, with their manes short. Dusty was darker and taller, and a little thicker too.

“Dreamrush, darling darling darling… Haven’t you heard? Our little darlings are going to be wed to each other!” Dusty looked so excited as she said that, she couldn’t even keep herself still. While Snipe Strike was radiating more pride than radiation itself.

“My little stallion works hard, I’m so happy that he has somepony who can fit his motivations and reach for the clouds with him!” I wasn’t surprised they were acting like this, hearing that those two had gone on their first date the other day was surprising, for sure. But for these two mares, overreacting did seem to fit the normal for them.

It wasn’t my place to correct them.

“Oh yes, I heard all about their… union. I really hope it goes further than the first date, they’re so c-”

“Of course it will, Rushy!” Snipe had raised her voice, her brow furrowing together in slight annoyance. “They are perfect together! My little Strike will one day lead our little town and maybe even get us on the map! Then maybe we won’t have worry about scouting outside from any threats, we’d be defended enough we can just sit at home! Plus that means less patching up for you, doesn’t he sound like a wonderful mayor?”

“Have some faith Dreamrush, surely your little forecast told you something about this!” Ah, that’s what they wanted. “We can’t wait to hear it come from your mouth!” Dusty didn’t even give me a chance to reply to Snipe and was going on about the daily ‘forecast’ as they call it. How do they still not get it doesn’t work like that when they’ve come to hear about my horoscope every single day ever since I took over the clinic. “So… Tell us Dreamrush, what did you see last night?”

I couldn’t help but sigh. I don’t want to disappoint them, they’re sweet ladies who haven’t done anything wrong besides be impatient. “Alright… I’ll gladly tell you, but please remember: It revolves around me in some way, and it only is about today. It’s nothing more than how my day will go, alright?” They didn’t say anything. They were just waiting for their answer. I couldn’t help but sigh as I cleared my throat.

“I saw a dusty plain, dry and silent. Everything at a still as a flow of green swirls

flowed in front of where I watched. Replaced with walls of gray, brown, and peach.

Rays of red appearing in the far distance. Two orbs, staring for but a moment.

Before looking away, leaving in its gaze two lesser Reds. They seemed to hold

a sense of self. The swirls of red were discontent until gifted that of gold and metal.

I hugged the Reds, and they vanished. Leading to more brightly colored swirls

of colors breaking out of the moving walls.”

They… Didn’t look too happy. Maybe if I kind of stretched it for them, they would be content? “From what I can tell… The first part of my dream must have been about your children! I saw a dusty plain, that must have been for Dusty Wrench, and with how quiet it was must have been for… Strike, as they are quiet. With the green being the two of you, watching over their eternal love...” The two mares looked at each other and smiled.

“Oh, that’s wonderful news Dreamrush! I knew you saw it! Oh, this is the best day!” Snipe must have been wanting this more than she let on because she hugged me over my counter. Snipe of all ponies was hugging me!

“Y-you’re.. crushing-” She let me go, and I stumbled backward behind my counter, landing with enough of a thud to make a few of my magical bandages fall out of their shelf. Great, another mess I have to clean up, and the Reds aren’t even here yet. I quickly picked up the fallen medical supplies with a weak telekinetic grasp, the blue glow coating them as they float up and back into their spot. I glanced back at the mares and saw they already left. I couldn’t help but glare at them as they left. That was more than just a little rude! But… I made them happy, at least.

I let out a sigh and glanced down behind me at my cutie mark. A strange conundrum of a picture, because I have no idea what I was looking at. It was a strange circular net, with blue feathers sticking out the sides of it. I’ve never seen anything like it and no one in town had either. But that’s not the strangest thing, not at all. Not only did it appear on my flank in my sleep, but one section of my curly, braided hair started to change color. Just a little bit on my right front bang, it turned into a swirl of pink and blue, and my daily dreams started.

Ever since then, I always have a vivid dream. I quickly was able to discover that it was predicting my days in rather vague ways. My father told me that my Cutie mark must have something to do with these dreams and that I should trust them. It’s because of him that I found the pattern, and so he called it my Horoscope, some prewar ritual that ponies would use to tell how their days would go, which means my talent is dreaming, how useful and how many times it’s saved lives.

Not.

Looking around my clinic, I felt a soft chill through the warm air. No, no not a chill, it’s just my nerves. When I know they are coming to town, I always get worried. I can’t shake the feeling that they always try to start something as if they want an excuse to do... Something. I must be overreacting, though. But still… What if this time..?

Snap out of it Dreamrush, I know that it’ll all be fine thanks to last night’s dream. But it’s hard to just blindly trust a vision I saw while asleep. There are those few times where even after the day’s over that I can’t make the connection between what happened and what I saw, and I believe that ponies make their own destiny, yet my talent is a direct opposition to that belief, and my dreams are never wrong. I’ve tried to prevent what I’ve seen on simple days, I still remember Mayor Ironstout yelling at me as a foal, just to realize I saw this coming as well. For the most part, I have stopped trying to change my dream outcomes. For the most part, except when…

I really shouldn’t think like that, I couldn’t change that. I need to distract myself for my sanity, I should be in a non-stressed situation for when The Reds shows up. I have the little satchel ready for them, nothing got spilled, so all I need to do is look at the second window.

“One... Two.. three..”

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

Doing inventory again and again is a chore, but I’ve made it a habit of doing so before visitors leave. Be the victim of a small robbery once and no more, make sure you don’t get robbed the same way more than once. Make it tedious, which seemed to be my Mother’s quote for life. I had my radio on, but the host was talking about current events, to which I couldn’t quite pay attention while I was counting, losing my place while counting just doubles my effort. Not that I didn’t like DJ Pon3, but I can tell he was a bit… biased, with the song choice. Playing mostly Sweetie belle and Sapphire Shores, I found it a real treat mostly for the sake of something new. When he played someone like Songbird Serenade, or especially Countess Coloratura, though I preferred to use Rara, it’s quick and simple. I was distracted enough, that I almost didn’t catch the male voice signing off.

“...and that was everything new in the Equestrian Wasteland, thankfully nothing too extreme this time around. Now be careful out there, children. More and more ponies are being harmed these last few days, we can’t have that now, can we? So please, make sure you tune in when you can. Between the morning and evening news updates, throughout the day I’ll be giving out little tips. Here’s one on the house: Disease, a slow killer that shows its ugly mug after any kind of animal attack or eating the wrong food. It’s slow and painful, so make sure you not only watch what you eat and where you step, but that you carry whatever you can that can help you get over that sickness. Now, enough of my voice. Let’s get back to some music with lovely Serenade Songbird!”

Well, speak of the devil. I’d say that this day is turning around. But Just as the song started to play, my front door opened and Dusty Wrench hurried inside, with a soft shade of worry coating her complexion. She hurried up and poked her head into my back room.

“Dreamrush…? They’re here. I uh, um... I just wanted to let you know, and if you could hurry…? Strike is making sure they don’t bother anyone,” great, right when the rare music was playing! I couldn’t help but be upset over it, the song will be done by the time they leave. But just in case, better safe than sorry, I used my magic to pull out the hidden, rusty, and small gun I had. An old, nine-millimeter pistol, that was given to me from the mayor so I would have something to protect myself. I’ve never really ‘used’ it, I know how to aim… somewhat… I’ve even shot a few bottles! So I do have some skill with the gun, but I’ve never had to use It ON somepony… Heck, not even a critter like a Radroach, Bloatsprite, or even those horrid little Radwudgies we have to clear out now and again. Yet now wasn’t the time to worry about missing a song, so I slipped the gun into my old vest (I wore it like a jacket, too warm out to shut it completely!) where my father had stitched in a little holster for it.

I thanked Dusty Wrench for letting me know and hurried past her, getting behind my counter and grabbing that satchel I got ready in advance before stepping outside, into what we know as ‘Our Town’

The light was faded, as usual, dulled by the never-ending blanket above, also known as the clouds. The source of light known as the ‘sun’, forever hidden, a myth to all us grounders. I’ve been told that it’s a circle, “Like some of those lamps we see everywhere?” I asked the resident ghoul. He laughed from the description younger me gave him. Mr. Party Favor said it was a rather unique way to put it, so through my childhood I called it ‘the hidden lamp in the sky!’

I always liked Party Favor, he looked out for all of us. He said he’d love to show us balloon animals someday, not that we knew what those were. I’ve always told passerby's that if they ever found any ‘balloons’ I'd be willing to reward them for it. I’ve always wanted to see those floating animals.

My mind was drifting too much, I needed to focus! I glanced around, looking for where The Reds might be. Thankfully, I heard them not too far, just around the corner! They were over near the town wall, ‘tolerating’ Strike.

You could even say he was being the bully.

“You haven’t even told me your name yet! Come on now buddy, how are we supposed to strike a deal if I don’t know your name. I’ve told you mine, Strike! S T R, I K E. Swift Strike to be exact, so again, hi! what’s your name? Bent nails? Rusty nails?” He had a good direction, almost right too. It was a name that was clear on his cutie mark, but that wasn’t rust. It was dried blood. Bloody Nails. A name I wish I could forget, I hated him! He was a… a creep!

“Ah am getting... SO sick of you... So SHUT. UP.”

“Oh don’t be like that Rust-”

“I! AM NOT!” POW! “RUSTY AT ANYTHING!” Strike was struck, and crumpled onto the ground, a few feet away from the trio of Red Eye’s goons. “You got that?! Keep talking with tha’ kinda disrespect to me! I dare ya, no want ya too! Give me the goddamn reason!”

Strike is the kind of pony to keep getting themselves into trouble, as in he doesn’t know when to shut up, so I quickly stepped between them and put on my best… ‘I’m not scared that you might rip my head off’ voice.

“Hello, Bloody Nails! It’s... Lovely to see you again...” Blugh… “But you’ll need to wait a moment… I have to check on an injury real quick,” I turned around before he could interject, I was able to see he was upset with it, but he didn’t challenge it… Which is good, because I’m all talk.

Turning my gaze to strike he was still on the ground, albeit smiling up at me with blood trickling down the side of his mouth, he was trying to hide his pain.

“Oh Rushy… I know that look, it’s your ‘he’s an idiot’ look. Don’t give me that! You know I just like to help, throw me a bone, come on!” I found myself smiling a tad at his excuse, Swift Strike might be who has to stop in my clinic the most because he easily is the most harmed… due to his antics. But he’s one of those ponies that… Most, ponies can’t help but like. We’ve known each other since we were foals, and he has hardly grown-up.

“One, you said it’s not me. Two, you know it’s true. Three, you’re an idiot. Four, open your mouth so I can look.”

“For you Rushy, I’ll-ACK!!” I had to magically keep his mouth open to peer inside, and inside I found the damage rather quickly. It was easy to see and already seemed to have its blood flow slowing.

“You hurt your tooth, It’s cracked. I’ll have to pull it out, go and wait with Dusty in my clinic, now,” he seemed like he was about to object with another one of his excuses, but surprisingly enough he sighed and spat out some blood and got up.

“Now that you mention it… My jaw does feel somewhat lighter, I’ll take ya up on that offer!” He smiled at me, with his lips shut to avoid more blood spilling, and hobbled off. He wasn’t walking completely straight and with a limp, he either is dizzy from the hit or hurt his ankle.

He definitely wasn’t going on today’s hunt.

With the smaller problem dealt with, I turned back to the triplicate of Red Eye’s cannon fodder. Bloody Nails the idiot Earth pony with his only weapon being a small, pretty pistol than the one I have, one of those griffin mercenaries… Claw, Talon? I forget their group name. She went by the name Glad, on account of their rising scars coming from both sides of her beak, with an old looking shotgun strung over her body.. The last one, A unicorn, was silent and never talked so I never learned her name, where she had a strangely curved blade attached to her hip.

She was my favorite.

Glad’s voice brought me back to reality. “Get on with it already Nails! I want to get outta this backwater dump of a town!”

“Yeah, I know you don’t like it here. You only complain every time we come here! Now if ya’d shut up and stop distractin’ me, and look intimidating like you’re hired too, I can get along with this here bitch,” he must have seen through my face and saw my scowl, because he added “Alright, Lil’ Bitch. I’m only sayin’ this once; We are here on behalf of Red Eye. With him working so tirelessly to bring about a better Equestria, he could use any bit of help as possible. From supplies… To ponies. We’ll take whatever,” the same speech as last time, and almost as if on cue, Glad cracked her claws, and the unicorn started to roll her neck in anticipation. It’s the last sentence that sends the message, ‘or else’. I know more likely than not that they probably wouldn’t do anything too drastic, but the chance they try to enslave us all… or worse, is scarier than losing a few drugs.

I tried to keep a confident look on, but I think it just came across as more of a clueless look. “Of course! I would just hate it if any of you got too hurt...” bleugh… I could feel the bile already in my throat… “I already have a care package r-ready,” shoot! Come on Dreamrush, don’t freak out! “I uh, filled it with medical supplies, made it extra heavy with extra chems just for you all!” I magically lifted the little satchel off myself and held it out to him, and placed it down into his large, un-moving arm. He started to move the bulky bag to test it, and after what felt like too long he slugged it over his neck looking SO full of himself.

“Alright Doc, this will do well… Some of our sick ‘workers’ have been looking forward to this medicine. You’ve done a good deed, let’s hope you’re as generous with us next time… Come on ya lazy shits, we’re leaving,” Glad actually looked… glad for once. She shot up and let out some over the top sigh. “Finally! This place makes me want a bath..”

They finally started to pack up and head towards the front gate. I couldn’t help but smile, they finally left! Frankly, I was proud of myself, especially seeing that I gave them a bunch of chems, and a few medical bandages for them to not argue. While I don’t usually like to do this kind of thing, or wish it on another pony… I hope they overdose, they’ve had their chances.

“Dreamrush! Dreamrush!! What did they do to Strike!?” Almost breaking down my door in her rush to figure out what happened, Dusty Wrench all but flew through my clinic door to me.

“C-Calm down Dusty… Just a punch is all, I just need to remove his-”

“You need to perform surgery on him?!” She grabbed onto me and started to shake me, albeit lightly. “What happened!? Is he okay?!”

“S-Stoooop!! Duus-”

“Is he in danger!? Is there a chance he’ll die?!”

“Wh-Wha? No! Just- I have to pull a tooth is all, stop shaking me!”

She finally let me go, rather suddenly so I stumbled for a moment. For a unicorn, she was rather strong, but after everything stopped spinning I thanked her for letting me go and started to make my way back home. I could hear the sounds of doors opening, hooves on the dirt once again, and most importantly children. They were all coming out of their homes now that a potential threat was gone. I felt a small, warm feeling spread through me. Once again, my dream was correct. The colorful lights flowing after the Red Lights left was both the townsfolk and their happiness. I couldn’t help but be appreciated towards my talent, if I wasn’t sure that encounter would have gone well I might have melted under the pressure.

How could I ever guess that soon I would be terrified of a simple dream?

Footnote: Level up
New Perk: Horse sense. You are a swift learner. You gain an additional 10% whenever experience points are earned.

Chapter 2: First Fight, First Flight.

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Chapter 2: First Fight, First Flight.

“They say your first is the most memorable, but it’s also where you screw up the most.”

“...Alright, just one more time okay? Don’t look away now Strike,” my telekinetic grasp encased the last fragment, and started to pull. The tooth shard wiggled, half from Strikes pained discomfort, resisting for a moment before it slipped free and was placed beside the other four pieces of tooth. He reared back his head and groaned, rubbing at his jaw. I couldn’t help but smirk because he… kind of deserved it, but regardless I held out a health potion to him seeing as he also deserved this.

Strike quickly snatched the drink and started to drink from it, draining more than he needed to. I even had to pull it away from him before he drained the whole bottle. He let out a small groan while testing that new hole he has on his jaw, “Huh, I sure won’t get used to that,” he stood up and trotted over to the grimy mirror inside my office that’s hasn’t been moved my whole time in the clinic.

Dusty Wrench hurried to his side and frowned, looking at the gaping hole in his smile, “oh no… that looks so awful on you…”

I saw a playful, mischievous look on his face before he even started to talk. “Ruushy..? You wouldn’t by chance still have those fake teeth things, would you?” he lowered his head and was looking up at me with his big eyes as if trying to guilt-trip me to fix his mistake. I could tell it was working by my defeated sigh and trip over to my medicine cabinet.

“Fine, only because you’re here with dusty, and if I didn’t she’d whine until I broke down and listened!” we all broke into a small chuckle fit, not because it was funny, more so because it was true. I turned my head back to the cabinet to locate the fake teeth and grabbed one of the two silver replacements to fit his style, not golden, “Now open wide so I can put this in,” he obeyed silently this time, letting me place the fake cap over the missing spot and let my magic flair around my horn. A simplified mending spell, reduced in power as it wasn’t to stitch together fresh wounds or broken limbs. Seeing as it was the weakened version of the spell, it would leave me magically drained to do something like that on a pony. After just a couple of minutes of concentration, the ‘tooth’ melded against his teeth and covered his jaw, just like how the note in the late doctor’s journal said it would.

Unfortunately, Dr. Night Wallow passed away before he could even teach anypony what he knew, seeing as he was our only real doctor. After he was found, Sheen Aegis, who was perhaps the kindness Wall Guard we have, started to ask around for anypony who knew anything about basic first aid, and as it turns out I was the only pony who read any of the books he owned and listened to what he taught. I was made the new town ‘Doctor’ in a heartbeat, while I’ve learned a lot since that day, I still can’t help but be terrified for the day somepony gets drastically hurt and needs something like surgery, I’ve never had to do anything on a large scale like that…

“There you go Strike, it looks good on you! Although, doctor’s order: You are not going on the hunt today.”

“W-what?!” he shot up, faster than any of his previous joke like movements, “But it’s- ow..!” he pushed his hoof to the side of his jaw, rubbing at where I put in the fake tooth and looked down at me. It’s not that I’m short, maybe slightly below average. No, Strike is just tall.

Dusty Wrench grabbed onto his hoof, petting over to try and reassure him. “You are an earth pony dear…” aw, she’s calling him dear already, “You can’t swing a weapon or shoot a gun without your jaw hurting like this. Why don’t we go to my place and I'll make us some soup, okay?”

Strike sighed and followed her out, but only after they hugged me and thanked me. I followed them out and watched them head down the street and out of sight. I figured nothing else will be happening for the time being, so I went back inside to prepare myself for the hunt. I usually don’t need to go on these, but this one was different. I needed to be there in case someone was hurt badly, which is a rarity but it still happens, but best to be safe… I think this would be the perfect time to try my new little toys…

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

The sign in front of the town was broken, faded, and decaying. Displaying ‘Our Town’ with the two words stacked on top of one another, as if the sign had a generic greeting. ‘Welcome to our little slice of heaven, Whatever Town!’ but Party Favor insists that it’s always been called ‘Our Town’, and I didn’t believe that for a second.

I was outside of the town, just in front of the gate (using gate loosely, It was more of a giant metal slab… welded to smaller metal slabs.) with five of the six Hunters. ‘I’ll just take a moment’ he said… Hah! How many ‘moments’ did Sheen need?!

Rocky Mountain and Crystal Riot decided to play some Caravan while they waited, looks like they had a seventy-five cap pot they were fighting for, if I had to I'd bet on Crystal. Skull daze, an earth pony who was brought here as a filly after her raider parents were killed, was going over all their armor and performing slight amounts of maintenance. Deffy Lionheart had taken apart her gun and couldn’t reassemble it, and Lil’ Brawly was waiting for her to realize he took one of the key pieces. I was starting to think that this was not a rare occasion.

To not only my surprise, but to the Hunters as well, we saw the mayor step past the gate and went right up to the second in command, Deffy.

“Hello Deffy, hello!” she spoke with her official voice, she almost always spoke with it. “I overheard that you were going to be down a pony for your hunt today. Such a thing just won’t do, so I’ve fished out my beloved little shooter to help you today!”

She must have less gun knowledge than me…

“Listen miss Dewdrop, I’d love to have you but-”

“So I can join? Excellent! Although… Would you help me make sure I put the bullets incorrectly, and that it’s ready to be shot?” To say Deffy was annoyed was an understatement.

“You are just… Goddesses damn, fine, fine! Come on Dewdrop, let me see it. Brawly! Fix my gun for me,” I watched them for a moment when I heard some… Strange hoofsteps, which I realized as slow, trying to be quiet, approaching behind me.

I spun, my braids swinging and almost whacking Sheen Aegis across his face. He had gotten so close in that armor of his! While not super protective, it was heavier than most we had. “Ff… Dam’ it Dreamrush! How did ya notice me?!”

“O-oh! Uh, simply, I heard you..?”

His face squished together in soft anger, and I couldn’t help but laugh at him. “Don’t pop another blood vessel now, can’t have two of you out!”

“Fo’ the las’ time girl, I don’t have anger problems! C’mon Rush, throw me a bone here,” so as commanded, I glanced around and set my sights on something far away, but my telekinetic grasp was still able to reach the brahmin skeleton in the-

“Rush, don’t actually throw me a bone.”

Dang it.

“Alright, alright. List’n up ya ingrates!” All five of the other Hunters sprang to attention, a rather impressive sight, and the newbie of the hunters, Lil Brawly, finally got it down! “The las’ caravan tha’ came through ‘ere let us know tha’ they saw a small pack o’ Orthros headin’ our way. Gotta make sure they don’t get too close, if they are roamin’ around too close, we gonna take em out. Dreamrush is comin’ with incase ya get bit, they got bad bites… An’ uh, Dewdrop, whatchu doin’ ‘ere?”

“Oh! Our wonderful doctor here told Strike to go home and rest, he was dealt a rather… hefty knock on the noggin. So I thought I'd be best for a replacement member. Squaddie Dewdrop ready to help!”

Aegis was clenching his teeth together, subtle, but it was enough to betray his emotionless face. I could easily imagine him shoving one of his cold hooves into his face with enough force to knock himself out, but he only replied with a single ‘okay..’ before he cleared his throat and continued.

“We will be travelin’ to the south East, for ‘bout an hour o’ two. If we don’ see ‘em, we are clear. But if we see them dogs? Dewdrop an’ Dreamrush will ‘ang back and act as eyes an’ shoot ONLY if ya are clear, while we take the front. An’ questions?” Aegis started to glance around, and we both caught Dewdrops hoof raising.

“Oh! Actually, how do-”

“LET’S MOVE!” Aegis rushed past her, as did the rest of the Hunters, leaving her just standing there, surprised and muttering.

“I-wha-but-HEY!” she stomped in annoyance as I trotted up to her.

“Uhm, Mayor Dewdrop? We might want to follow after them before we’re ditched?” I started to hurry along after the squad, who was trotting at a slightly faster than normal rate. Thankfully this was enough to get the mayor kicked into action and follow us.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

Blistering heat, walking for at least an hour, and carrying probably eighty pounds of equipment… I was already panting! I can’t believe ponies do this for a living! It doesn’t help that I don’t do anything to stay in tip-top shape… this was all so brand new and nothing like I expected at all!

I thought me and these companions would be listening to a radio, some of us badly singing along. Laughing about how much we sucked at it, but this was eerily quiet. Nopony had said a word in the past ten minutes, and it was driving me nuts.

Looking back at the Mayor, and even she was walking with caution in every step, her head low and ears up, eyes shifting with her revolver in her maw. She may not know much about how guns work, but she knew how to use them, I didn’t. I realized what I was staring at.

Experience.

I would have never guessed our kind and silly mayor has been out in the wastes before, sure obvious she has more than I have. A grand total of… zero times, I was born in Our Town and had no plans to leave. My ears shot open at the sounds of howls, Skull Daze and I looked towards our left, where a few small hills that were connected to a tunnel system was. Skull pointed in that direction.

“Howls coming from thataway, they probably are in one of the caves,” the way he spoke had an essence of strong confidence, but… he was wrong.

“But there was no change to the howl, if it came from one of the caves it’d have an echo and sound deeper. It’s past the hills” As I spoke, Skull stared at me. His piercing eyes staring deep into me.

“...Good point…” he didn’t look flustered or upset like I had somewhat expected thankfully, I couldn’t stand it when you correct somepony and they act as if you insulted them.

Then it happened, a symphony of gun parts moving and close combat weapons being drawn, even the mayor pulled back her… her… the part a pony pulls back to fire a revolver like hers... To try and follow their silent lead, I opened my bag and pulled out both my crummy pistol and my toys; three sticks of dynamite.

I only had five total in my ownership, so I decided to bring about half of them, leaving the other two and the single grenade I owned back home, save the big one for an important day. While I’m hesitant to lose half my stache, I’ve been dying to see them in action! I’ve seen so many rock piles explode, that it’s almost lost its charm.

Almost.

But just throwing these would be dangerous to the Hunters, especially Brawly and Skull Daze, who had a dagger and sledgehammer respectively, so I just hurried up to Aegis.

“Excuse me… Aegis, sir? I brought some explosives, would it be alright if we used them?” He looked down at me, and I suddenly felt half my size. Why must he have this intense vibe about him? I think he was sizing me up, slowing gaining confusion on his face.

“Where did you even get those..?”

“I… bought them…?” his stare continued to pierce into me. “From one of the traders that came by? I saved my caps for almost his whole stock,” his piercing gaze turned into one of surprise, all fierceness behind it vanished.

“You’re the one who did that?” I simply nodded, and he muttered to himself, “Ya think ya know a pony..” I don't think he knew I could hear him, but he continued the original topic. “Yes, we can do that Rush.” Yes!! “Throw one o’ two and back up, aight Rush?”

By the time he finished, I was already squeezing past them, rushing to the start of the small hill, and peaked around it only for my heart to sink.

I had expected some sort of vile looking creature made out of radiation and taint, a creature only seen in nightmares in the realm of reality. Instead, I was spying on poor, two-headed dogs. THIS is what an orthros is!? They were large with patches of fur missing, and I notice on a side of one of its necks was heavily scarred. I realized a pattern very quickly though…. They all had scars, fresh, similar wounds that would become matching scars. Either on their left or right side. Just then I felt Aegis’ presence beside me, his voice quiet, yet had a light hint behind it.

“These days Dreamrush, everythin’ has potential danger, ya’ mus’ be thinkin’ ‘wait, dogs? T’ose poor t’ings!’ Don’t, t’ey are jus’ as likely ta kill ya as a raider. See t’ose’ screwed up heads? Yer a smart gal, you’ve seen ta pattern. Why are t’ey like t’at?”

Why is… it the way it is? Two heads with one looking deformed, the nicer looking heads all had scars on their necks… specifically between the two heads, I’m only now realizing. The heads are barking at each other every now and again… Wait, that head isn’t deformed, that head has been ghoulified, so- Oh... wait a moment, now I get it!

“Did… Did all the smaller, ghoul heads bite the other heads neck?” he refused to answer, but he just rolled his hoof for me to continue. Why would they bite the other head like that…? They’re ghouls so… “Because of… Wild instinct?”

“Correct, more specific, hunga’. If t’ey don’t get fed, t’ey’ll lash out ta try an’ get food, by any means. So if it’s main head sees us…?”

“They will attack…”

“Righto, Rush. It all comes down ta ‘unger with wild animals, and t’ey are almost always ‘ungry. Now whadidya learn Rushy?”

“To be wary of wild animals?” even as I said that, I felt like I was wrong, he didn’t want to hear that.

“Good answer, but nah, t’at’s somet’in’ t’a voice on ta radio would say, obvious ta anypony who ain't new ta t’a wastes, like ya’rself. So ‘ere’s a trouble saver: Coincidences are almost neva’ a coincidence, t’ings are neva’ too good to be true, and each monsta’ looks t’at way does fo’ a reason. T’ink o’ t’a ‘why’ o’ t’ings,” think of why things are the way they are, this was his advice to me. Can I...apply that to my cutie mark…?

“Now go on rush, blow t’em up,” I had completely forgotten we were here to kill these monsters… No, these animals. Just because they had to be killed didn’t mean they weren’t animals. This wasn’t just stepping on a radroach, this was attacking five (ten if you think about it) dogs who just traveled to the wrong place. I sighed and looked down at dynamite and lighter in my grasp, where did all my motivation go? I was so excited to use these, but no-

The magical chime was quick and brought me back down from my thoughts, a green glow, click, and the sound of a flame rising, followed by the hiss of a fuse, somepony had started my lighter and it caught onto one of the fuses! My eyes darted to one of the only other unicorns in the group, who’s horn was glowing green.

“Brawly what the hay are you doing!?” right after I yelled, I saw all their eyes widen and ears fall, taking a combat stance, and I realized my mistake: blowing our cover. I turned and saw ten sets of eyes glaring at us, followed by the screech of howls. Fear shot through my veins like a drug and for the first time in my life I felt that if I did nothing, I would die.

They all started to charge, I could hear the growls from the monsters I had imagined we would be facing, and to hear that terrible sound from these dogs was terrifying. I had no idea what I should do next, my mind a blank static, but not my body. I felt the weight of the dynamite leave my magical grasp and lob forwards, and was already flicking the lighter on. I felt myself gain control of my body from auto-mode as I lit the second stick, so I started to step back with Aegis’s command the only thing in my brain. ‘Throw one or two and back up. Dewdrop and Dreamrush will hang in the back, acting as eyes and shoot only if clear’.

The dogs were fast, and my first stick was already in front of them, its fuse heading towards its grave at a rapid pace. It crashed onto the ground as I threw the second one into the air and turned away, bolting past the Hunters, up beside the mayor with her Shooter (I had learned along the way here that the revolver she had was called Shooter, I take back what I said) in her muzzle ready to fire, I could see fire growing in her eyes, and I realized the first explosion had gone off, I hardly even heard it. I heard something above it though, A yipe being cut short, followed by the orchestra of gunfire. A soft buildup of four semi-automatic weapons, accompanied by the pained howls of hounds. I couldn’t bring myself to look. Finally, wind rushed past as the second stick went off, silencing the gunfire and snarls moments after, followed by an empty silence, nothing was making a sound besides the ringing in my ears.

Nothing else happened for the next few seconds, I had never felt this way before. Do they always go through this at the start, or have they just grown cold to it, or maybe it’s just me? A pat on the back cut through the rushing emotions, and I focused on the owner. Dewdrop smiling down at me, and even helping me back up to my hooves. She started to speak as she began to dust my body off, focusing on my now torn vest.

“There we are Rushy, a fine job. You really helped them today you know, even with a few faults. Not bad for a first time out, you even got a few kills!”

“I-I did!?” I couldn’t tell if I sounded excited or upset, I wasn’t sure how I felt exactly, but I turned to see the carnage left from the explosions I created before she could continue.

Two holes, inches away from touching, with two canine corpses near each one. The first of the pair had been knocked its victim away and was missing a limb, the second one must have been further away from the explosion, as it was fully intact. The way it fell was blocking the view of most of both, presumably, missing faces, yet I could see burns across the craniums. I was glad I couldn’t see either face.

The other three were resting, unmoving in growing puddles, and I could only look for a moment before looking away. That was brutal, more so than I expected. So this is what ponies do on a daily basis? I never realized how lucky I was to never have to deal with anything on this level before.

“A...Alright… We’re done here now, let’s go home.” my voice was kind of shaky, I wasn’t sure how ponies could become deaf to these thoughts, but I was glad I didn’t need to. I was about to start walking home when I heard a giggle. I looked at the mayor who had a sly smile across her face, it said how she knew something I didn’t.

“Well… Not quite yet rush. Just give it a few minutes for them to finish.”

“Finish? Finish wh-” I cut myself off when I turned, as I saw the hunters do the one thing every Wasteland survivor does, loot. “W-wait… Why are they doing that? It’s not like ponies tend to eat the meat…”

“We need every cap we can get Rush, and griffins will pay handsomely for the meat, and the leather can be sold as material.” caps? That’s why they were mutilating these dead animals? It makes sense, I understand it, but I couldn’t help but feel like this was wrong.

It only took a few minutes, and the ‘looting’ was finished. The Hunters seemed happy with their catch, so they must be getting a lot of bits out of this. I ended up turning down their offer to share, it still didn’t sit right with me, and with all that done and over it was time to head home. I was tired and needed to sleep, my emotions have been shot today and I could hear my bed from here.

On the way back I noticed how much livelier the group had gotten, only Skull daze and I were being quite. It must be because the job was done, because I have never seen them so rowdy.

“They were huge! I’m glad I didn’t have to use this little knife, I completely underestimated them” Brawly was yelling within this more excitable state, and poor Deffy was right next to him.

“I told you barehoof fightin’ isn’t versatile, so you bring the shortest weapon we got, seriously? Get a sledge or bat, like Skull.” Skull in response grunted in agreement, causing Brawly to groan out in annoyance, just as Crystal Riot jumped onto his back!

“Yeah but guns! You see how quickly the last three went down from just a few clicks? Bang bang! The best choice, obviously!” almost all of the Hunters, even the mayor, groaned before she was even finished, I was able to hear Rocky Mountain muttering to himself.

“Not another preference fight… Worse thing ‘bout this lot.” I was just barely able to pick him out over the collective groan, I didn’t even think Skull heard that, and he was closer.

It’s not as if I had large ears or something like that, I've always been able to pick up on small details, which I guess is great for a doctor to have. My eyesight matches my hearing’s capabilities, and I can usually spot something before anypony else, making it was easy to hear Brawly and Riot argue over the best weapon types, it was enough to make me finally crack a smile.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

Nothing else that was eventful happened throughout the day, besides a little filly, Stakeout, who tripped and got a scrape that I had to make sure wasn’t infected, and Dewdrop who wanted to talk about how much fun she had (even though she didn’t do anything).

The day was finally over and I was ready to lay down and rest, have my dream for tomorrow, and continue life. I have to admit, after the initial shock from today, I felt proud of myself, I helped protect the town! I finally understood why the Wall Guard and Hunters do what they do every single day.

The exhaustion was hitting me hard, and I fell onto my old mattress, both my mind and body becoming lost in a sea of comfort. I let my eyelids grow heavy and close, wondering if I was going to be hunting more in the future…

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

……………………..

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

My eyes opened with faint morning light breaking through the window, and I was sitting up, stretching, when I realized it.

“...Huh…? W-wait, what…!?” for the first time since I got my cutie mark, I had a dreamless night. What.. did this mean…?

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

Saying I was anxious was an understatement because I was completely terrified. I knew Snipe and Dusty would come in soon for ‘their’ horoscope, but what would I even tell them, ‘not today, sorry!’? My mind was racing and just sitting around in my clinic for much longer would drive me insane. Maybe some semi-fresh air would help clear my mind and help me think of a solution? Yes, it would at least be better than sitting here and let my mind continue to eat itself.

As soon as I decided to go outside, I heard a few bangs echoing over the distance. I could hear some power behind the shots, so it must have been one of the Wall Guards with their hunting rifles or something similar, shooting at an animal or something.

The air that hit me when my door opened was refreshing, more than usual, and made me sigh out. A walk is just what I needed to clear my mind, yep! I heard a few more shots, and a stallion dart out of his home in his guard outfit, and head towards the entrance, he’s probably late or wants in on target practice, maybe? It didn’t matter to me, I had to collect my thoughts.

I was heading towards the wall so I could just walk without paying attention. My dream, or lack thereof, has left me more worried than ever, along with the heavy realization of how much I not only trusted but relied on my fortune teller dreams. I had always told myself I wasn’t stuck to what my dreams said, but I guess I was only telling myself that.

Was this just a fluke, just a day I failed my talent? Maybe it just happened to skip to show how fast today would be? Maybe it’s just this one time, a coincidence?

As soon as I thought along that line of questioning, I heard Aegis’s voice in my head, echoing what he instructed me on yesterday. “There are almost no coincidences in the wastes…”

No coincidences… Then why did this happen today? I was racking my brain, trying to think of half baked reasons, but the answer just refused to come to me. My train of thought was interrupted by an explosion, followed by the sounds of a confused crowd, followed by pained cries coming from the direction of the explosion.

Followed by a hail of gunfire, within a storm of screaming.

My heart stopped and my blood turned into ice in my veins. Has something gotten inside? Why was there an explosion, I thought Aegis didn’t have much? I only knew one certainty: My body was running towards the entrance. I wasn’t thinking of any of the ways this could be happening, but all of my body was screaming that somepony had gotten hurt, but I was wrong, somepony was not hurt.

It only took me less than a minute of running, my mind sprinting at trice the speed trying to imagine what had happened. The first thing to register in my head was a similar sight that made my mane and coat stand on end, a small crater beside a three-legged pony, and a pool of crimson stemming from the guard.

Next was the gate, the middle section of it was missing, blown inwards and knocked over on top of… On top of one of the Hunters I had just gone out with yesterday, where he had so much energy, and now Brawly wasn’t moving.

Finally, past where the gate once was. I didn’t see somepony, no, I saw many ponies. From just a glance I could tell that there were only our guards outside with not a stranger in sight. Even the hunters were out there, filled with holes, sheen Aegis was facedown, Skull Daze was on her side without her sledge insight and- oh no… Strike… his hoof was bloody and being held to his neck.

I turned away from the growing red sea in front of me before it made me break down, it was hard to see with the tears swelling, but through the slight whimpering noise I was making, and watery eyes, I saw muzzle flashes. Gunshots coming down from the street, there was only one set of gunshots going off now… Was a single pony doing all this? I had to leave before I was next!

But… If I could save been one pony, be it mare, stallion filly or- The foals! Are they okay…?

My hoofs were moving before I could even think. I didn’t even have a direction yet, just further into town. On the way, I found more bodies, and even had to trek around a few like… Like Snipe’s, and quickly found myself outside my clinic, with Dusty Wrench waiting limply in front of my now bloodstained door.

The door that I locked when I left, she tried to hide in… Okay Dreamrush, hold it together… It’s not your fault, so don’t feel like you’re to blame… I had to force myself to step over her and quickly shut the door and looked towards my stocked shelves.

I had a small plan build through panic; grab whatever medical supplies I could grab, and sneak around to save whoever I could. But my priority was the kids. If I have the chance, I can use the rest of my explosions to stop this monster, if I can just get that grenade under them, they should be done for!

My plan was made, and it was time to execute. After calming down my breathing, I hurried to my shelf behind the counter and reached out to grab as much as I could, after one hoof full of shoving things into my vest pockets, I heard the gunfire closer than ever, followed by glass shattering from my window, along with bullets hitting wood.

But above all that, I felt a searing pain in my arm. Enough to cause me to squeal out in pain and drop then next load of supplies in my hooves clutched onto my arm only to feel a warm liquid coming from both sides of my arm, I’ve been shot.

I’ve been found.

Grenade, grenade! I had to get it before they kill me! I tried to rush to my room, but the pain in my arm was crippling, I stumbled into a limp at a snails speed. I started to turn into my room when I heard a door creak, and a single shot rang out. Burning metal lodged itself into my side, striking a more tender spot on my body and into the wall behind me.

I heard another cry escape my muzzle, with something metallic in my mouth. Most likely some blood had gotten into my lungs, and the strength in my legs had vanished. I hit the floor hard, which made things go fuzzy… and my eyesight was just getting worse. I glanced at the doorway to look at my attacker.

They were clad in better armor than I’ve ever seen, with very few parts of them visible, an armored coat of black, covered with a tiny bit of cyan. I saw their frozen lavender eyes look down at me, then to my stock, followed by a deeper than expected mare voice.

“Finally something useful for me here!” she sounded far away as if she was yelling from a distance, she turned her body away from me and all my medicine and started to steal it all. I was dying and she only cared about-

I’m… dying…? No no no I can’t just die like this… I wanted to move my legs but they refused, instead my body let out a weaker cry, softer than ever.

No, I can’t… I felt tears start to stream down my face, why was this happening to us, why…?

I looked up one more time, vision swaying, I noticed a bright cyan colored image on her flank, it looked like a...ghost, of a pony…? I shivered from the imagery and felt my body growing colder. My shivering caused a surge of pain to shoot through me, my eyes forcing themselves shut from the pain with my whimpers of pain and breathing to soften, and I couldn’t open my eyes again.

Not like this… please not… like...

…

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

A gray pony laying in ashes.

They slowly rise up, slowly grow in orange hue.

Brighter and brighter until they bolt up.

They start to run towards a fiery pit.

Bleeding orange, a long trail following behind.

They skidded to a stop, enveloped in red and white.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

The first thing I felt was a dull throb coursing through my arm and body, everything was dark, even after I opened my eyes. A familiar brown view above me, if my body wasn’t in pain I’d just assume everything was a dream. But my dreams are never realistic or do I get hurt, so all that was real…

Everything that happened was real… Sheen Aegis was dead, Brawly was dead, Dusty was… Even Swift Strike was…

With the adrenaline gone and my body at rest, I couldn’t stop the flood works. I could only lay there, curl up, and quietly sob. So many had died just... Yesterday, earlier today? I don’t know, but surely I wasn’t the only one who lived, right…? I couldn’t be, surely somepony else… I could feel something stirring within me… Hope? It feels almost alien right now, what if Dewdrop is alive? What about…

“Children..!” I sat up, gritting my teeth in pain. I wasn’t in my home, so somepony must be alive. I had to find out, and the pain was worth to see who’s alive. I silently stood, and finally saw myself, magical bandages over a lot of my torso and leg, far too much for it to get it’s full usage, with seemingly half my health potions emptied. Somepony saved my life, but they didn’t know what they were doing, but they did at least removed my vest so perhaps they knew something.

I slowly stumbled out of the bed and looked around, it seemed to be a fairly small home, almost a shack. I had no recollection of anything like this in Our Town, maybe someponies backyard shed? It had a table, bed, pots being used for chairs, and even a bathroom, but that was it. How bizarre.

I trudged to the door and forced it open, my body was weak and wishing to go back to the bed, but two questions were weighing too heavily in my mind. Who survived, and why did this happen?

The world outside was also dark, matching the night of the shack I was within, surrounding me was dark hills and two larger home like shacks, with a campfire near the two buildings. Bathing in the light of the fire was a single griffin, feathers seemingly a coat of as, and while tall their body seemed weaker, and less firm than Glad. As the door shut behind me, they lazily looked at me with a half-hearted smile. I’ve never seen a griffin genuinely smile, it was slightly off-putting in comparison to Glad when a lighter masculine voice came from his beak.

“Hello pony, good to see you’re up. We’ve been waiting for you. Miss and Sir are resting in their…” I was wrong, this wasn’t even Our Town…

“Where… Am I…?” I couldn’t wait for him to finish, but it turned out my voice was soft, sounding weaker than I felt, but I didn’t care, I needed answers.

“Well, sir and miss have always called this Home. The rest of us call it Buru. Now come here, sit, and rest, you need it. Come on, I even got some…” while he started to ramble about canned foods, I had stopped paying attention. Buru… I’ve heard of it before, from somepony at my clinic. It was nearby but…. Wait, if these hills are actually mountains then… I needed to go south and down the mountain I was on!

“I suggest… Uh, Pony? You alright? Not dying on us are ya?” I was looking around at this point, can’t waste energy answering. There, just past one of the buildings, and past him, was a path. In blind worry, I started to trot past the griffin, I could feel burning pain in my right arm rise, but I could ignore it, I need to ignore it.

As I was passing the little shacks, I heard his voice in my right ear, he was flying beside me with a disapproving look on his face.

“Pony, I don’t know how to tell you this, but you almost DIED girl, you shouldn’t leave, or even trot yet, Miss and Sir want to meet you!”

“I.. Need to see if anypony Survived… They shouldn’t be alone-”

“What ponies? No pony survived. Don’t bother with it pony.” my heart skipped a beat, my legs stiffening in place. But what about…

“Even the foals…?” please no… No no…

“Foals? What foals?” they… didn’t find them? They didn’t find any of the kid’s bodies? That meant there was a chance, I may not know what the sun feels like, but I could feel it shining through the clouds after he said that, and I couldn’t control myself.

I was running, shoving past the griffin and onto the path. I could hear him say to hold on, but he didn’t pursue any further. I was gone, running away from Buru with it vanishing around a corner within minutes, I could only hope this path leads back to Our Town. It was time to see if my luck was about to turn around.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

Our Town was within sight, light starting to shine over it, the only thing between me and it was desolate sands and rocks, like the one I was resting on. Even with the adrenaline running through me, I’ve had to stop twice so far to stop heaving before I puked and to give my leg and side a break.

I was in pain, and nothing made the pain stop, but even then I never let myself rest longer for a minute before running again. I Couldn’t rest any longer than that, my mind wouldn’t let me.

What was I even going to find? It hasn’t even been a full day since the attack, so I was guessing everything would be the same as when I fainted, maybe the children did something with the town?

I finally got to the back got to the backside of the wall, and started to roam around it towards the front, I decided to slow down in case I could hear anypony, but there was nothing. No animals or ponies, including any foals voices.

I turned the corner to see where the massacre had taken place, and didn’t see a single body. Unless the killer did something to them, which I found unlikely, somepony had to have been here! I started to hurry forward, my body trying to have me slow down, but I forced it to keep going. Once I turned inside, I saw the bodies, respectfully lined up against the wall, somepony had taken the time of day to do- Stay focused Dreamrush, start searching.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

Third building and I found nopony once again, I was standing in front of the door I had just shut and was starting to lose hope.

“HELLO!? Anypony!?” My voice was starting to sound better, yet hardly my own. I was thirsty, tired, and weak. “Any kids around?! Hello!?” ...Nothing. I sighed, but I would check every building to make sure. I waddled down the steps and hurried to the next building over, which was just another home.

I got inside and started to turn this home upside down as well, finding nothing on this floor. Not every building had multiple, so I hurried to the stairs to go up.

FLUMP

What was that? No, wait, WHO was that?! Finally somepony else is alive! I threw the door open magically so I could rush through, with my eyes locking on the source of the sound. I could only think to myself, ‘OH COME ON!’

The griffin with the smile etched into her face was back, eying the bodies for a moment before she looked back to me, and simply rolled her eyes.

“Out of all the ponies alive… Greaaat…” she wasn’t ever happy to see me, obviously, but normally that wouldn’t be an issue, but this wasn’t a normal situation.

I didn’t know what to say, why was she here!? Before I could even think of what to get out of my scrambled head into some kind of question, the other two showed up, the unnamed unicorn and Bloody Nails.

“Damn, looks like you let raiders in. How does a town like this fuck up that bad? Loosing so many ‘friends’, tsk tsk, little pony.” the way he was saying that… as if to suggest I was at fault, how dare he!?

“I-”

“Aw, and look, she got hurt. She must have used some of the medicine for us on herself, no wonder it was mostly chems! That’s good to know, we’re on our way back to Filly, and got some of our supplies… Lost. We were hoping for another donation because you clearly have enough.”

“I don’t-”

“You don’t have any? That’s fine, We take living donations too, remember?” I could feel my eyes widen while his face started to grin at me, he was right, he did always say that.

I just turned around and ran, I could feel my pulse rising already, and I could only think of where to hide, anywhere that could work. I didn’t even have a weapon, what else could I do? I was trying to figure out where to get away from them when weight slammed against my head, sharp digits wrapping around my head and forcing me to the ground, making me land beside one of the blown-up buildings, and I cried in pain when Glad grabbed my arm and yanked it behind me. She was standing on me to hold me down, in one fell swoop I was pinned.

I heard Bloody Nails start to chuckle as he walked towards us, I was struggling in Glad’s grasp as much as I could, but I don’t think I was even moving her claw.

“Now, I’m only going to ask you once slave, where are the others?”

“I-I don’t know!” The answer flew out of my muzzle, I knew he wouldn’t like that answer, but I couldn’t say anything else. “I j-just got back… I'm trying to find them…”

My body was trembling, praying he would accept that answer, he stood beside me, nodding his head as if believing me when his hoof crashed down into my head, and what little I was holding up crumpled to the ground within a cry of pain, his rusty coat turning into a giant blur in my eyes, and then pain ruptured through me, stemming from my right ear, causing me to scream again.

“Wrong answer Rush, the right one is anything that doesn’t piss off your new mast-” He was cut off by a lighter scream filled with rage, a filly’s voice.

“Leave Doctor Dreamrush alone!” followed by a nasty, angry squeal of pain. Bloody Nails whipped around towards the voice, showing he now has a large glass shard sticking out of his cutie mark.

Weapon, I needed a weapon NOW. I know that voice, and she put herself in danger.

Bloody Nails was glaring daggers, or nails in his case, as my vision cleared, and I saw Stakeout, one of the oldest foals without her cutie mark, and she was starting to back up, all the courage in her voice gone as she met Bloody Nail’s eyes, as he pulled out a few rust nails from his little pack before speaking.

“I’m going to watch you drain after I pin you to a wall, and make EVERYPONY HERE WATCH!”

My magic finally found a target: A plank that broke off from the nearby house’s explosion. Instantly it was swinging in an arch, and slammed into the side of the smiling griffin’s head and knocked her off me, meaning I was free to get up. Now that I was on my hoofs, I did what I thought would get Bloody Nails away from her, and threw the plank I had at him.

“Run! Get away from him!” Both the Unicorn and Bloody Nails turned just in time for him to get whacked across his smug face, and he stumbled back from the blow.

The good news is that he wasn’t distracted by her now, and the bad news is that Glad was getting up, and the other two were glaring at me, and now I don’t have a weapon. I should have thought this out more, so following my own advice, I turned and ran.

“Gah! Glad, Unicorn, go and grab her! I’m getting that sonava-bitch!”

Great, there was no good news.

I’ve learned that I can’t outrun them, at least not with this leg, so I ran inside the blown-up building and grabbed onto one of the first knocked over, light-framed chairs within my immediate sight and flung it at the open hole I just came through blindly, with a loud squawk and thud indicating a bullseye. Giving me a moment to look at the room, and besides more furniture, I only noticed two other things.

The walls were swaying, and parts of the floor was weak, which my gut was saying to use. No time to argue with it, and fling more chairs and the singular table at one of the two support beams while trotting to it, wobbling over the loose floor. I wasn’t an earth pony, but I’ve seen how they buck, so I have a good idea on how to do it…

I turned to face my back legs to the beam and saw Unicorn (original nickname there) run inside, lifting the chair out of her way and lock her eyes onto me, with her long misshapen knife in its holster. It was now or never, she threw the chair towards me as I bucked, and screamed in pain, crumpling to the floor.

The wound on my leg could hardly support me standing and running, why did I think putting all my weight on it, and kicking like that wouldn’t hurt!? I hit the floor hard, hearing two cracks near the floor, and the other from the beam as the chair soared into it.

Unicorn tried to make her way to me, but luckily enough the falling roof blocked her path. Unluckily though, the next chunk of debris crashed beside me and made my section of floor collapse, making me fall under the house.

The ground was only a hoofs reach away, but my already stinging arm didn’t like that. I could see dust gathering above, blocking the view of my hole.

I had a moment to plan, but before that, I crawled through the disgusting dark realm I was in, to a light breaking through the dark wall. I found my exit in case they found me, and I felt myself rest for the moment. I’m weak, outnumbered, and weaponless. I can’t change the first fact, and the only way to change the second one would be to kill or stop one of them somehow-

Oh, oh I have an idea, but from here on I have to conserve my magic… I can’t believe it, this plan might work, at least against these two. If I can get her shotgun I’ll have the best weapon in town.

Alright… it’s live or die time, and I refuse for my dream to end here.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

Glad and Unicorn was still within the blown up home, searching through the dust cloud. The hole I fell through must have been smaller than I thought, or covered, but they’ll find it soon. I can’t wait any longer, Stakeout and any other foals need me now. I left an obvious trail for them to follow, a hoofprint trail, along with the nail that was shoved into my ear to show where I went, my clinic.

I stayed behind the houses and general store, which was cleared out, to avoid being seen. I was moving slow, and got there later than expected when I ran into the first thing I didn’t plan.

I couldn’t crawl in through the window, my leg and side hurt too much and I don’t even think at full strength I could magically lift myself, and I don’t have any backdoors! Crap, this means I’ll have to use the front door, directly in the open.

Hoping I don’t get seen, I stumbled out of the ally way and hurried up the stairs, opened the door, and shut it as quietly as I could. The whole ordeal took about ten seconds tops, and I was already feeling like a nervous wreck, especially now that I was home. For a moment, I felt like I could let my guard down, until I turned, seeing the empty shelves and my blood sprayed across my wall and floor near my room. I was more shocked that my shelves were emptied, to be honest, it felt like I wasn’t a doctor anymore. I only then noticed the empty potion bottles near my blood.

They treated on me here? It feels so… Odd, someone saving me in my own clinic, Mr. and Miss., I would guess who did it, I’ll have to-

CRACK! A pair of talons shot through the door, followed by a feminine laugh.

“I found you, Rush! You’re going to work with or without broken ribs, hauling loads regardless of your body!” No! Not her now! If she’s here, then Unicorn must be nearby! I had to act, rushing towards my room to execute my plan, when the door came off and sailed over me, crashing into the wall.

Magically grabbing onto the things currently on my mind, I sent multiple glass bottles flying into Glad, shattering on impact, causing her to misstep from my barrage and fall down the stairs, screaming out.

I noticed still didn’t have her shotgun drawn in hopes to capture me, perfect, they weren’t trying to kill me! She was out, Unicorn an unknown factor… I had to act, now! I scrambled to my room and dove for my secret stash, surely it was still here, right? Is it possible that the armored mare took my entire stash too? I felt around for a moment, panic starting to settle in when my hoof wrapped around a mix of metal and wood.

“You’re gonna pay for that! I’ll shove a burning spike into that leg and we’ll see if it ever heals!” I yanked the pistol close as I felt a tug on my tail, which made me squeal. I didn’t have time to bite onto it, so I had to rely on magic. I rolled over onto my back, firing blindly at the griffin behind me, and heard a small gasp.

Glad was looking down at her chest, which was starting to bleed. Mixing in with the blood coming from her face and glass shards on her chest. I… shot her, which meant she was-

“You’re an idiot.” her claw shot out for me, causing me to panic and shoot wildly, firing twice before her claws wrapped around my neck, lifting me in the air, and throwing my gun off to the side, breaking into two pieces when it crashed into the wall.

“Using a gun that’s hardly even held together? I’m surprised it didn’t explode on you! Unicorn, I got her!” her face went towards the window as she yelled that, she wasn’t looking at me and Unicorn was outside! Even with her choking me, they still didn’t want me dead.

I started to concentrate, building up the spell as fast as I could, my magical glow gaining her attention when it started to flair around my horn.

“Just whatcha think you’re-” I fired the spell, causing me to instantly see double, my vision was swirling when both her faces were hit by the spell (Which was oddly satisfying to see it hit twice). She let out a growl and shook her head before glaring back at me. “What the fuck was- Just what… Why..yawn… why am…” her body gave in to the anesthesia spell, and fell over, making myself crash onto the floor as well.

Standing took effort, but I was soon back on shaky legs. I can only cast that spell once a day, and I was hoping to use it on her after I dealt with the second one, but this can still work out, I have the shotgun now, which makes things easier.

Yet when I stepped forward to get it, I felt something sharp against my neck and I froze, seeing the misshapen blade lifting in front of me within a pink glow. Where had Unicorn, no, where IS she?! She wasn’t in front of me, and I was against the wall… I slowly glanced upwards.

She was there, glaring down at me, but with hardly any hint of other emotions. She tapped the wall, and in response to nothing happening, she did it again, once again getting nothing in response. What did she want out of me? I saw her eyebrow raise and she glanced upwards, eyes returning to me for a moment before darting back to the griffin, her eyes widening, and her neck… exposed.

I jumped, not away, but up. She wasn’t looking, so she didn’t have a chance to use her blade, and I felt my horn cut through flesh, causing us both to fall, I was able to land on my hoofs and just barely not falling over from the pain in my leg and side, and I felt something warm running down my horn and the side of my face, it was blood that wasn’t my own.

Unicorn fell in front of me, making a strange, half gasping sound. I pierced her throat… Why did I do that? As soon as I saw her exposed neck like that, without her looking at me, my body just screamed now. I didn’t think watching somepony die of asphyxiation would be so brutal, even if I hated them, but here I am, with Unicorn unsuccessfully trying to stop her bleeding throat, all while staring at me, eyes full of fear and hate. I noticed now while she was gasping that she was missing her tongue, maybe that’s why they just called her Unicorn, she never said her name?

Her body slowly went limp, and I forced myself up. I’m not done yet, after all, I had Glad down, Unicorn dead, and Bloody Nails to deal with, and now I also have a very… curvy, knife, and the shotgun from Glad. I tried to lift it with my magic, levitating it slowly in a flickering field, at this rate I was going to suffer from a magical blowout, and I can’t let that happen.

I spent some time slipping the holster off Glad and put it on for myself, and slung my brand new, not useless gun into it. But when I looked at Unicorn, she made me realize the second thing I screwed up. She has armor I could wear, and I would have to take off the holster to put it on. Great, keep wasting time Rush, let Nails find you instead, ugh.

Her armor was kind of...pipey? It looked almost self-made but held together firmer than I expected. It’ll offer some protection, but leave my flank, back legs, head, and obviously my neck exposed, and best of all it was light, I felt like I could easily run with it!

Not that I could really run at the moment, but I was ready to fight Blood Nails and actually stand a chance. I started to go over a mental checklist…. Medicine was the first thing to check. I never put my vest back on, not that I knew where it was, so I had none on me. Scouring my shop was a useless endeavor, I had been cleaned out.

I’ll have to force myself to move, but I was reaching a limit. Next was the rest of my Stash, and without worry I pulled out my last three sticks of dynamite and the sole grenade I owned. Perfect, even if he got me, I can still use this as a surprise. I didn’t know exactly how big the explosion would be…. So I’d have to get lucky to get away unharmed, I think I'll save them as a last resort.

Finally… oh! The shotgun’s ammo, I needed to take Glad’s shells. I started to rustle through her, when I saw her chest slowly rising and exhaling, she was still alive and can still hurt ponies, still a threat! But right now, she was resting just like any other creature. I sat down to think about this, I could kill her, but that honestly just felt wrong, yet trying to think of any good reason to let her live only resulted in excuses to make myself feel better, I couldn’t help but feel guilty as I drew the curved blade from its holster.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

One. Shell. She only had one extra shell on her, I only get three shots, are you kidding!? Ugh, at least this shotgun should be in better condition than that awful pistol I had, and even though it was broken I decided to keep it, with no idea on how to fix it, so it sat broken within my small saddlepack.

I was finally back to where we had separated, and I had no idea where they went. I didn’t get the chance to see where those two went, I know they were closer to the eastern side of the houses when I ran away from here, so perhaps that way?

I was tempted to call out, but decided against it, as a shot against him without his awareness was too nice to let up. By this point I could smell something, and it wasn’t the nearby blood and corpses. It reminded me of a campfire, and when I realized that I saw smoke rising two blocks down.

He wouldn’t, would he? ...Ugh, what am I thinking? This is the same pony who apparently wanted to foal nap us for years, of course he’d set a building on fire! Trying to trot only made me nearly collapse in pain and exhaustion, so I had to just walk. It’s infuriating to have to ‘walk’ to the rescue, but that’s what I’ll have to do! Halfway there, one block away, I heard yelling.

“Come on out Runt!” it was Bloody Nails, and I heard his gunfire. “You can’t stay in a burning building for long, and If I have to drag a charred corpse outta there I’ll take it out on your little doctor friend!” he fired again, and I could see where this time, an empty building to prove his point, and he wasn’t looking anywhere but the fire, he didn’t see me.

Magic chimed and the holster on my side clicked open with the shotgun slipping out of it’s home with ease, and although it felt heavy, it was a breeze in comparison in comparison to about everything else in the past twenty-four hours. I placed the sights on his head and felt more at peace to shoot him, he had to die. I pulled the trigger, resulting in a loud bang echoing right next to my ear. That hurt, a lot! Why was it louder than all the other guns I’ve heard?!

To make matters worse most of the shot missed, only lightly marking his side and the top of his neck. He howled in pain and turned to me, hatred burning in his eyes, and he let out another how, this time filled with unintelligible words towards me. While I couldn’t really understand what he was saying, I think it was something close to ‘I’m gonna kill you, ya son of a…” due to him pulling out a nail, dropping and kicking it, making it soar through the air at me with its sharp end facing me. I screamed and pushed myself into the alley next to me, we were three houses away from each other and he’s that accurate with kicking a nail!?

“Is that Glad’s gun? Were you actually able to do something to them Rush!? Congrats, I’m gonna break you, and take your limp body to the worse ponies I can find!” here I noticed my third mistake, leaving the gun behind. I was able to yank it away and back to me, opening up to remove the fired shell. I could hear he wasn’t running, just walking as he laughed the things he’d do to me, and I was shaking at how...creative, he was getting.

The base of the house I was next to was also warn, with a few planks missing. I crawled away into the darkness after reloading, when I heard another shot that crunched the wood above me.

“Trying to crawl into a grime filled hole? I bet you’ll be wishing for a home like that tomorrow, last time you’ll be close to comfy!” I heard a plank shatter and hit the ground, he was ripping down the walls themselves! “Come on then! Just gonna hide?! I’ll flatten this whole damned town after you, little cunt! Where the fuck are you?!” Moving away from you, that’s what! That is until I saw him rip away another chunk that acted as an exit for me nearby his legs.

This had to be my chance, I began crawling through the aged dirt, crawling with who knows what. I got to the hole with the realization that I can’t get out through that hole fast, he’d see me first, and with him now out for blood I’d have to do the next best thing, and prayed.

‘Oh by the five goddesses please let this shot hit, please… good fillies and colts, and a grown mare will die, please…’

I took in a deep breath, and lifted the shotgun in my magic and shoved it through the hole with ease, and while I started to push myself through, I turned the shotgun and pulled its trigger.

Another blast echoed out, and I heard a scream and a heavy crash to the ground. Crawling up to all fours, I saw bloody Nails, holding a bloody hoof to his left eye, bits of his muzzle bleeding as well, with his gun on the ground behind him. He was screaming more profanities, and shaking his head wildly. Then he noticed me, and when he saw I had the shotgun pointed at him, he started to howl a sickening laugh.

“Hahahaha! Oh you dumb BITCH, think I don’t know how to count? That’s a double-barrel sawed-off, you’re empty!” he kept laughing, until he spat blood onto the ground. “I win, you dying excuse of a doctor!” he turned his back to me, walking towards the gun he dropped.

“Don’t you dare… touch that..! Just surrender!”

“Or what? You are FUCKED. You won’t even last a month, maybe some of those kids will be good entertainment and just be ki-”

BANG. I pulled the trigger, watching his back erupt and body crumble, dead before he hit the ground. I didn’t care, anypony still alive was safe-

Stakeout. Burning building. I turned around, why was everything swaying? It doesn’t matter, walk Dreamrush. I don’t think I was walking straight at this point, but that doesn’t matter either. Everything was sounding dull, and no pony was coming out of the burning house. I needed to let them know they’re safe now, so I forced everything I had to my voice.

“They’re gone! You’re safe…! Come on out…” I stood there, breathing heavily, everything moving in slow motion, why was that? But more importantly, where are they…. Any second now… It was just moments later that I caught my breath as the door opened, as Stakeout walked outside, why did she look so worried…? We’re safe now… I felt the biggest smile across my cheeks, it’s something that didn’t hurt, so I just let it grow. Behind Stakeout, I saw more, smaller, living bodies. Nyte Watch, Torchlick, Patchwork, and Olbreck, all rushing out, parts of their manes burned. I was absolutely beaming and started to rush towards them. Tears swelling in my eyes.

But after my first step, the world turned sideways, and my feet left the ground. I could hear them cry out my name… Why are they crying…? They’re okay now… We’re okay… Don’t cry…

I couldn’t think past that, as exhaustion finally claimed me.

Footnote: Level up

Skills note: Lockpicking has reached 25

Perk gained: City Pony. The horrors of the wastes have scarred you, and you feel safe back within walls and towns. You gain two DT when inside buildings and settlements, but lose one DT when out in the wild wastes.

Chapter 3: Black Cherry

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Chapter 3: Black Cherry

“The worse decisions are the ones against the majorities wishes”

The orange pony trots through town, the trail she leaves growing ever vibrant.

She looks in buildings, filled with nothing, and she waves them off.

Stop in the largest building, in front of a scarred locked box.

It bled and shook yet stayed shut, the orange pony can not open it.

Meet with gray and blue ponies, lead them up a trail into ridges.

Enter a shack by her lonesome, to which legs collapse and the dream ends.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

The ruins of Our Town were worse than I originally thought, and I didn’t like the idea of getting used to a view like this, it made me feel sick. When I woke up, I was being watched by little Nyte Watch, acting like a little guardian angel watching over my rest. Her bland, colorless gray body sitting perfectly still till she saw I was awake, and she jumped onto me with the tightest hug her body could muster while sobbing into my chest.

“Dreamy..! You’re okay..! Sniffle… We were all so scared you wouldn’t wake up! B-But you’re awake now! Wait till the others know!”

“Can I… just hold onto you for a moment…?” I asked, to which she was more than happy to let me. I needed to think about… everything. Ponies were dead, and I played a factor in that, all these foals and colts were orphans now and needed a home, they sure can’t stay here, and I… I just need answers.

My stomach interrupted my thoughts, making me realize I hadn’t eaten since I was shot. I looked at Nyte and asked if they had found any food and her answer was confusing.

“Oh, yes! A lot! Let me take you to some!” We weren’t… raided for food and medicine then? That armored pony acted as if my shop was a bonus, and she sure didn’t look like a normal raider, everything wasn’t just strong, it looked new too. There must have been more of a reason than to kill us...right?

Walking showed how sore my body was, but nothing in comparison to how much it hurt to be shot. Nyte took me to all the other foals and got me a meal (Foal snack cakes and a sparkle-cola? Kids rule) while we asked each other questions. As it turns out, their mothers grouped together to teach survival methods. ‘Take advantage of your size, as you’re currently small you can hide within places like broken ovens’. They hid inside ovens, I didn’t think those ladies were that smart, and they lived because they remembered those lessons.

After a bit of talking, I told them all I wanted to look around town and decide what to do, even though I already knew. They wanted to argue but after I told them ‘you all have earned a turn to rest, I’ll get a plan’, they relaxed. Now here I was in a neighbors home and searching through it, trying to open this STUPID safe. I was tempted to try and rig the door to explode, and I was pretty sure I had the right equipment to do so, not the best looking safe… But I decided I should save my dynamite, instead, I had to go to my clinic and look inside my cabinet, it was completely untouched from normal medical supplies to useless things most ponies wouldn’t care about, like the false teeth. I crammed the only tool I owned behind some of this and… aha! There it is, an old screwdriver with a few bobby pins beside it, mine for the taking along with a few back up meds and even a few things of Med-X and a Rad-away.

When Doctor Wallow passed and I gained ownership of the clinic, I learned he left more than a few cabinets and containers locked! I had to go and buy an issue of... Oh, what was it again... Something to do with pegasi feathers, and how they had a lot of uses? I remember hearing how there was a section on using it to lockpick, and I was able to learn a bit and if I replaced the feather with bobby pins, I'd be able to open most of his lock containers, and had to pay off someone to crack open the rest. I haven’t tried to open anything locked since then, and I’ve already broken most of my bobby pins.

I felt a twang of guilt while messing with this darn lock, does this count as stealing? I’d believe that anypony who passed on wouldn’t mind what I was doing, but I couldn’t help but feel bad about it regardless, and I was three safes in already.

Click. Score! Finally, it opened for me, the guilting feeling fading and being replaced for the excitement of treasure, it was the hardest one I’ve opened so far and I could feel a large reward hiding behind this metal treasure chest.

“...Oh come- uh- are you serious?!” Almost nothing was inside, only a single shotgun shell, a small stash of caps, and a single note. I pulled the small loot pile to myself and checked out the caps, a measly twelve. Next, I grabbed my new double-barrel and cracked it open, and noticed something odd. I pulled out the other shell I found within Party Favor’s ammo box and compared the two… they were different sized. Great, just great, this was useless to me. What about the note? Why was this left inside a safe?

‘I’m writing this as a promise to myself because today I had to sell my pappy’s hunting shotgun. Wish I didn’t have to, but I had no choice, food for the youngin and us is more important. But I’m gonna start saving up my caps so I can buy my little girl her own gun to pass down. I’ve decided to leave my last shell with this note so I won't forget. If you’re reading this Stellar Point, daddy loves you.’

A drop of liquid fell onto the note, I finished reading it and was just… staring now. His savings were so small that he must have just started, and Stellar Point wasn’t with us... At least they’ll have each other…

“I hope the wasteland isn’t always this awful…” I know there’s a lot of killing and dying out there, but what other unimaginable things have yet to be found? I shouldn’t need to worry about it though, I know what to do; Find a new home. That should be the main concern I have, so why do I keep asking myself ‘why’? It’s a thought that hasn’t left my mind since I woke up, repeating more than the song the Parasprite-bots play.

I finally left the home and went to the next building, the mayor’s home. It was bigger than all the others, and it was the oldest building here, still standing after the attack. I haven't seen dewdrop since we were out of the town together, and prepared myself for the worse and opened the door.

It was strangely clean inside as if it was left alone. No blood or bullet holes, and the only thing that felt off was the open door leading to the basement as if it was thrown open. So without any other leads here, I went down to explore. Her basement was a small concrete room, it was dim from a lack of immediate light. Besides old and decayed furniture cluttered about, in the far corner was a safe with its door swinging from the draft coming in, the sides where the door met the safe were charred black and the walls beside it looked like they were damaged recently, the armored mare blew up this safe! She took everything inside, I even felt the back of it for any secrets, but found nothing.

Why was this the only safe that has already been opened? In fact, why does the whole building look fine? I could feel myself being flooded with question after question, trying to answer them with flimsy answers to try and find the reason for this all when I heard his voice in my head.

‘There are no coincidences in the wasteland’

No coincidences… So there was a reason for this safe like this, but what it could be, I had no idea. Just what was Dewdrop hiding in there!? I rested my head on the safe and groaned, I'm getting nowhere with this, I don’t think I can find anything else in here, or town in general… It’s time to leave.

I grabbed onto the safe as I stood up, still feeling weak, when I felt the safe wobble back and forth slightly, logically from the explosion, yet it strangely felt as if it was rubbing against something. I paused and started to look around the safe, finding nothing until I started to pull the safe from the wall to find another safe built into the wall, completely unscathed. My brand new treasure hunter side started to scream from within, and I couldn’t resist her screams. I pulled out my pin and screwdriver and got to work.

Snap! Already I broke a bobby pin and replaced it with another. This lock felt studier, stubborn, and harder to convince to open than all the others, yet I was dying to know what is- SNAP!

My bobby pin broke, and I reached for another to find I had run out. Frankly, even if I found more to try with, I don’t think I would be able to open this. Great, I can’t use my explosives either, I need to save them in case the mare comes back, if she finds new explosion markings she would know someone was here after her, and I don’t think her hunting me is going to help. Whatever she wanted might have been inside here… It didn’t matter, I have spent enough time searching around with not much to show for it. I was starting to feel like a sitting target with crosshairs on me just for being in town.

I left the mostly clean home feeling confident Dewdrop wasn’t there, the pungent smell of death that was lingering elsewhere was nowhere inside, and I sure wasn't going to scour over the corpses of friends to find her. It was time to leave home, where most of us will likely never set foot here again. We need to get to Buru and from there… I’ll plan something to do then.

Gathering up the kids was easy, and doing an inventory check was less than displeasing, minimal food (at least we had sugar bales, yum!), and even fewer ways to protect ourselves. My odd knife, double-barrel (using twelve gauge shells, it seemed. Torchlick called it a Sawed-off shotgun.) and the two pistols - some assembly required.

They were all quiet, the novelty of me being alive having long worn off. Not one of them had objected when I said we had to leave, but they kept glancing around on the way to the fallen gate, I would guess they didn’t want to leave, but too scared to stay, saying goodbyes maybe? They were just kids after all who had to grow up quickly, but they were handling it better than I would have at their age.

We passed the gate and I couldn’t help but look back at my old home. The past few days have been a war and I crawled out on top somehow, not by skill, power, or tactics…. But by the mistake of foes and luck. I don’t think It’ll happen again, I’ll need to learn how to survive. I decided to leave without saying goodbye, because I’ll be back. This isn’t goodbye, Our Town.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

I forgot to think of how long it would take us to get back to Buru, what with me feeling weak, and spending half the day searching. The sky above was starting to darken and I couldn’t tell if Buru was around the next corner or twenty away. This time it was Nyte Watch who asked.

“Miss Dreamrush? Are we close yet?” her voice was high and infused with hope, which I couldn’t bring myself to break…

“Well… we’re closer than before! Can’t be too far away now…” it was my second time telling them that specifically, and they looked like they were starting to see through me, I needed to get them there soon.

That’s when we heard a few small growls from across the nearby hills, a symphony of...some sort of animal. They were coming from the left side, in a bowl of the mountain with little cover and withered vegetation, it was a pack of wild canine creatures, patches of their fur was missing and smaller scars across their body that I couldn’t make out from here. These had to be wolves, and I couldn’t help but wonder if I passed by them running home and never saw them, though it doesn’t matter, I shouldn’t let us be seen.

Besides Olbreck, the rest of the foals followed my lead with a hint of confusion on their faces, but they seemed to get the idea. We were slow and in the open, but aways from where the howling was, as far as I could tell the animal, or animals, hadn’t seen us yet, but who knows for how long? Se should-

Crunch. Something stepped on what must have been a twig and made a sound from the protected, rock covered plains we were approaching. There were two sets of eyes in front of us in the darkness of cover, both leading down into a singular body, another orthros, lost from the pack, up against ponies with almost no firepower. My body felt like it was locking in place, and a cold sweat crept across my body, how did it get so close when it was so big? The panic overwhelmed me as I started to yank on the oddly shaped blade I had holstered, when it pounced, causing the children, and possibly myself to scream.

I used the knife as a shield, I expected something heavy to crash into my blade, with eyes closed out of instinct, yet I didn’t feel anything, only the sounds of hounds and snarls with one whine and yelp mixed in.

My eyes opened to reveal a pile of canines atop the now bleeding orthros, all biting into it from multiple angles, even at both its necks. It’s thrashing quickly began to die down, but not before it had sunk its fangs into one of the nearest wolves and was throwing it away.

Wordlessly I magically tugged on each of the foals to nudge them forward, making them walk so we could get away, thankfully none of the wolves seemed to care about us, too busy with the meatier creature. By the time we got to the next corner the wolves were digging into the corpse, we should be safe now…. Nyte Watch looked horrified and before I could figure out what to say to her and the others, something with old, ash-like feathers landed in front of us.

“Well don’t you look like absolute shit, Pony” it was him, the griffin I saw in Buru…! What was he doing out here? Was he here to help? Were we almost there? I had so many questions in my head, but I ended up just silently hugging onto him. I wouldn’t call myself super affectionate but I couldn’t help myself here. I just felt relief, and the foals seemed confused, and so did the griffin, yet I didn’t care.

“Okay… You’re not dead at least? There there? Don’t… start crying on me, aight? Please don’t…” he sounded completely unsure of himself, so yes he was confused over this. I let go of him and took a step back, everything felt lighter than it did a few seconds ago.

“Sorry, about that, are we… Close to Buru? At all?” I asked with a quivering voice, as he looked over us. He was silent for far too long that when he spoke, I could feel the thin suspension building shatter.

“Just around the corner, Pony. I heard the growling and came to look. Come on now, Miss and Mr. were upset you left, they’ll be happy to have you back. ...Oh, also, congrats on finding some ponies alive.” saying I was relieved was an understatement, what I was feeling was indescribable warmth that made me forget all the hardships of the last few days, realization that I was able to save kids and make a difference..!

“Come on already…” his voice shot clarity through me, bringing me back to myself (I really shouldn’t let myself get lost in thoughts like that anymore) and started to usher us along, and within just a few minutes we could see the little ‘town’ of Buru.

The two main buildings I saw before were bigger than I originally thought, flanked by a smaller building on each side. Buru was surprisingly small, but I have no idea as to how many might live here besides this griffin whose name I forgot to ask for, ‘Sir’, and ‘Miss’.

“Where is everypony? It almost looks like a ghost town here…”

“Do you see how late it’s getting, Pony? Workers like Mr and Miss sleep earlier than the others, they like to work early in the day with the crops” his voice was filled with admiration for those two, I couldn’t help but wonder just what kind of ponies they were.

“Alright… It’s Dreamrush, by the way.” the griffin stopped and faced me, staring into my eyes before he burst into laughter. He was trying to talk between the outbursts and his stone-cold personality faded.

“Y-you… Bwahaha! That is by far the most pony name I have ever heard! Dreamrush!?” at the very least, he tried to cover his beak in a futile effort to stop laughing. I knew it shouldn’t, but dang did this hurt.

“Excuse me, griffin sir?” I looked at the voice to see Stakeout walking up to him, and her soft voice was able to get him to stop.

“That ain't my name, kiddo. Geneval, call me Gene, you follow squirt?” his laughter was paused at least for the moment, and for some reason, I didn’t feel as insulted.

“Gene, can we have a place to rest…? My legs are tired…”

“Of course kiddo, follow me. As for miss... Dreamrush…” he let a few snorted chuckles, officially making him on my nerves. “You can take the small hut that you were in before, I’ll take these small ones inside where it won’t be crowded.” I wanted to tell him ‘no way, bird brain’, but thinking about it made me reconsider. If Gene, ‘Mr’, and ‘Miss’, were bad I wouldn’t be alive, and that I already trust the folk here.

“Alright…” I said reluctantly, which caused the kids to follow Gene away into the house, leaving me alone with deafening silence as I watched them leave. I stayed there in the dark outside longer than I should have, not thinking, just listening to the nothingness. I felt like a rock by the time my hoofs began to move, each crunch on the ground sounding like shattering glass.

While it wasn’t brightest out, the light was enough to give the structure more form than I could see before. It was indeed similar to a shed, and the quality of it was lesser than the two larger buildings, with a faded collage of bright colors, it felt pretty, even if visually all design had faded away.

The inside was almost the same as I had left it, with the sole exception that the bed wasn’t a mess, it was all ready for somepony to slumber, though I felt ready to sleep for goddess knows how long. I didn’t have time to wonder if I did right by both leaving Our Town, and letting the kids go with him, because as soon as I tried to relax, darkness overtook my mind, and the dream began.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

An orange creature is still

Unmoving and unchanging

Other colors walk to it, yet leave quickly.

Many small colors, one repeating brown.

Finally two, blue, shakey blobs approach.

It says till the outside light vanishes

Leaving the orange creature alone.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

I was bedridden, my limbs hardly wanted to move and screeched when I tried. Gene eventually came in to ask if I would like to come down for breakfast… is that ironic? I think it is. I told him what was wrong and decided that I was staying in bed with limited movement for three days, and it sounded heavenly, finally time to relax. I was brought food by Stakeout, and all the other kids came by to see me and thank me, which felt odd, what had happened feels like it was so long ago already. Not many other ponies came by, just a mare my size that seemed much stronger and capable. She asked mostly about yard work and farming, and I realized she was sizing me up for my usefulness as a farmer. I was without a doubt disappointing her, and the only thing I learned about her was her name: Bountiful.

The other pony who came to see me was a red and gray unicorn with a stubby horn. She introduced herself as Shady Berry and was actually worried for my health, it turns out she’s the closest thing to a doctor but knew next to nothing, and that she was the one who made me drink almost all of my health potions. When I pointed that out to her and that I knew what I was talking about, she began to assault me with medical questions, I had become a teacher for an hour.

After she left, my visitors were a blur of children sporadically until it was dark outside when two, not quite elderly but older than most ponies walked in. One was a stallion unicorn with a broken horn and a pale coat that had him blend into the faded walls, and the other was a mare unicorn with a surprisingly dark green coat, their cutie marks of complementary sets of trees. If I had to guess, these two were ‘Sir’ and ‘Miss’, and Miss spoke up first.

“Ah am ever so sorry how long it took us to come meet you…” she couldn’t carry a bigger accent if she tried, I actually had to take time to decode what she said. “We were so so busy you see…” Sir began to nod in silent agreement, not adding much to the conversation. “Ah’m just glad ya’re alright, Lil’ Pumpkin, welcome to Home.”

“But this isn’t… and I-” she didn’t let me finish, as if she knew what I was about to say.

“Oh we know, Pumpkin…” at this point I couldn’t help but realize I had no idea why she was calling me Pumpkin, what even is that, an insult? “Dat’s just what we call our little slice of heavenly hell. Now nuff bout us, how ya farin’ Lil’ Pumpkin? Gene was saying you wants to be in bed fo’ three days, issat true?”

I assume she wants to know so I can make up for their saving me, I’ve heard countless stories about the greed of the wasteland, and I’ve seen it in the ponies who all tried to barter with me while visiting, yet at the same time her voice was only full of concern, I couldn’t find any ulterior motives in her words… Well, not that it mattered, I’d be dead without them.

“Yes… I’m going to spend two more days in bed and walking in this room to make sure everything works fine. And my name is Dreamrush, not this Pumpkin thi-” finally Sir spoke up, in a surprisingly deep voice that didn’t fit his soft face.

“Oh-ho! We figured, you just have similarities to one!” I… Don’t follow, is a pumpkin a type of pony? A thing? “But besides that, Pumpkin, is that long enough? It seems so short, you were shot for goddess’s sake!”

Their caring reactions were overwhelming for me, and I didn’t know what to say. These two were being more worried than how much most of the Our Town residents would have been, and they wanted me to rest more?!

“O-oh. Well… I shouldn’t stay off my hooves for too long… I’ll rest more if it’s needed, alright?” This seemed to somewhat still their worries, and with the main topic finished we just started to chat. They were especially worried when Gene told them how I ran off as soon as I woke up, and how they were about to chase after, but Gene, their ‘level headed bird’ had them wait. He said they were too late to act, and that I was either dead or ok. The biggest thing I had learned was that just Gene calls them Sir and Miss, they are Rusty Coil and Vi, just Vi. They soon left after all that, and I realized I had one unanswered question.

What in the world is a pumpkin?

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

The last few days were a blur, and I was walking around with minimal strain. Shady Berry was teaching the foals about harvesting and farming while Gene taught them what to look out for. Once the three days were up, I finally got to leave that small shack and entered the main building with the same faded paint job. The interior decoration was almost non-existent as if they threw out the pre-war things they found not essential. Within the kitchen I found Gene just relaxing inside, leaning back in a chair with its legs lifted off the ground.

“G’day, Rushing. Glad you pulled through. How can little old me help you, hmm? Oh and no, we ran out of the stale snack cakes the other day.” I wasn’t sure if he was trying to humor me or not, at the very least he’s been rather consistent in her personality, excluding that rude outburst before.

“Well, I am hungry… But I need to find Rusty Coil and Vi. Happen to know where they are?” he nodded and jumped up, wordlessly walking out the door beside him. I figured he was leading me to them so I followed him, which rewarded me with Gene holding out a cracked, and leaking, bowl filled with a strongly scented liquid.

“Eat up first, before you waste it all.” he shoved the bowl into my hooves and let go, causing me to sit down and scramble to hold onto it. He returned to a cauldron behind him, grabbed one of the few nearby bowls, and dunked it in for himself and chugged.

Without much choice in the matter, I started to drink. It was lukewarm with surprisingly little taste, simply tasting like flavored water with small chunks of what I had to guess as carrots. The odor may have lied to me about the taste, but it would make my body think it was full.

Once I finished, he nudged me and took the bowl, placing it beside some similarly cracked bowls, and walking away yet again towards a small orchard, or what would be considered one. It was just three rows of vegetation that didn’t go on for that long, although now I knew some of these had to be carrots. I could see Nyte Watch and Patchwork following Shady Berry, and Stakeout, Olbreck, and Torchlick listening to Bountiful. Finally just past them all, Vi and Rusty were in the back, cleaning up their bushes and taking precise snips to its leaves. I felt Gene pat my head before shoving me next to them, making me squeal while I try not to fall over. Both elders watched and hardly reacted about it, and Vi trotted up to me and helped me up before she spoke.

“Good morning, Pumpkin!” they’ll never tell me what that is, will they? “Ye’re up and about, das’s great! How are ya doin’?”

“Much better… Nothing is hurting all that drastically thanks to all the potions, I’m just glad I have one leftover.” I’ve been trying to “keep looking at the bright side” ever since I got here, and I think it’s helped my mood. Before I could get to what I wanted to talk about, Rusty spoke up.

“Wonderful darlin’, Just remember to take it easy for the next few days.”

“About that…” before I got the chance to continue, I was cut off. He had a strange concerned look that I wasn’t used to seeing on a stranger.

“I know it must be hard for you Pumpkin, but please know that you can stay here if you want. We… know you don’t got anywhere else to go, we thought if we offered a solution…” he stopped, his intention was clear, and a great offer was in front of me, but my choice was already made.

“I’d… like to believe that I normally would, you both have just been some of the kindest ponies I’ve met, but I can’t! My mind just won’t stop, it’s completely restless… I… I have to find out why this happened. No matter what I do it’s been in my head, and I was kind of hoping that… you’d watch the kids while I try to find them a home, I can’t just take them with me.” I was expecting some sort of resistance from them, saying why I should stay. They seemed protective like that.

“Okay.” she… agreed just like that, I didn’t know how to respond to that. My stunned silence got her to continue. “Frankly, ya might wanna just leave ‘em in our care. We don’t get much in troubles outta here, they’d be safe.” I… didn’t think about that, they are safe here, after all, I’d have to find someplace amazing to make it better than here, wouldn’t I?

“Right… That’s right, I guess that’s the best call. It’d be too unrealistic to find a better place, and then even taking them would be dangerous… If I uh, happen to, I’ll come back for them! I promise!” they didn’t seem to mind in the slightest at my proclamation, and simply nodded.

“When yas leavin’, Pumpkin?”

“Well… Today?” this is what broke their calm demeanor, her voice growing louder while rusty shook his head.

“Ta...Taday!? Ya jus’ left yar room t’ough! Ya should rest a few mo’e days, ya?”

“I wish I could, but I’ve already decided… It was bountiful fixing my weapons, right? Do you know where she placed them? And where should I go from here to the nearest town?” Vi looked like she wanted to say something, anything, but she just left out a sigh and looked defeated. This time it was Rusty who spoke up.

“In the other shack… It’s her workshop after you get your things head north towards Rainbowless falls.. can we at least know why you gotta go today?” For some reason, I began to have a smile creep across my face, and I felt strangely satisfied in my response.

“You could say that… I saw it in my dream.”

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

Finishing goodbyes to the ponies that lived here, and Gene, was easy enough. Although bountiful started to yell at me about proper weapon maintenance, and ‘how dare I let this Kukri get worn out like that, and when I asked what a ‘Kukri’ was she… gave me an earful, all she needed to say was that it was the knife. But besides all that, my weapons looked better than ever, those attackers didn’t care for their weapons. But she seemed to care at least somewhat for my well being, she didn’t charge me a cap and was kind enough to give me a few boxes of different ammo for each of my weapons.

Saying goodbye to the kids was going to be heartbreaking, I know it. I brought them all together and sat down with them, a bunch of kids I hardly knew outside of checkups, and they know less about me. Yet I was their last connection to home, their normal lives. I felt responsible for them… worst of all, I forgot to prepare what to say here.

“Dreamrush? Is it true you want to leave?” Olbreck knew? How did… “Bountiful said you were going to go away…” he was a rather… direct colt, it seemed. But the others all carried the same face, they knew it too and were upset.

“Well… Yes, I have to go. It’s what my horoscope said after all!” that was hardly a good enough answer, and they were not happy with it, yet they accepted it. I felt a crushing weight on me, as the reality settled in. I might never see these kids again… “I’m… I’m going to find out what happened and… and-” this time I was cut off by Torchlick, who seemed both fearful but excitable.

“Teach them a lesson..?” there it was, the question I feared. How was I supposed to answer something I didn’t know?

“I… Want to find out why, so I’m going to find that monster and… H-handle it. I also want to find you all a better home!” I was trying, maybe too hard, to sound excited, yet it seemed to work a little bit, but not nearly enough. “Oh and… Stakeout? C’mere please.” she looked confused as she walked past the others to me, even more so when I grabbed her hoofs and placed the “Pipe” pistol (as Bountiful called it) into her grasp.

“Huh…? A gun?” I wanted to leave some wonder in them, something to excite kids, and from what I’ve seen, she seemed like the first to act and to be a leader.

“It’s the pistol I got after I became the town doctor, It belonged to the doctor before me and he got it when he got his position.” that last part was a lie… probably. “And now that you’ve shown you’re a responsible filly, I want you to take it and help protect everypony here, okay?” she and the other kids seemed shocked, a connecting state of shock and bewilderment. I think I got them-

“What’s its name Dreamy??”

...Fuck.

“Oh, that’s easy! It’s a, uh. Inheritance? Yes! That’s its name!” she looked even more amazed than before, my rather awful name for it caught on better than expected. It was now when I needed to leave, on a high note. I gave Stakeout all the ammo I had for it, (Thank the goddess the other pistol, a “.44“ used different ammo. Thank you Bountiful!) and gave each one a personal goodbye. Not one of the kids teared up, thankfully, that might have broken me, and I set off towards Rainbowless Falls.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

What in the world is with these giant bugs!? First, it was those giant flies with stingers, but now it’s these round, bloated bugs after me! I swear by the time they finished the flies, there were two more of those strangely colored bugs that came from nowhere, doubling their numbers! I wasn’t fast enough to outrun them, and they were so sporadic that I couldn’t get a good shot off with my .45, and I was scared to waste ammo, so I started to fish out the double barrel from its holder when I felt another surge of pain from my tail, one of those colorful orbs was chewing on my tail again! It was biting quick, but it was more stationary, which meant aim was easy even for me, and I only missed once before it exploded into gunk, leaving about 3 shots left before I was forced to reload. The other three were getting close, and I had no miracle help in front of me, just Rushy. Finally, I was able to pull out the Double Barrel (I really need to readjust that…) and pointed it behind me, at the general mass of bloated bugs and fired, almost dropping the shotgun from the explosion-like sound it produced, and force behind it. I didn’t know it was like lightning in a barrel! Worse of all, the three bugs were still flying with only minimal bleeding from two, and one that was teetering back, yet continued the chase.

“Oh come on! Go away and lick your wounds! Why are you chasing me?!” my cries were useless to the feral bug that just wanted to eat me, and I glanced up the path I was going on, the turn up ahead was getting close, and empty mountains unchanging. I could feel my tired limbs wanting to stop, screaming from the previous days of stress. Glancing back at the bugs to see them closer than ever, another two minutes and they’ll easily be on me.

I pointed the sawed-off again, this time waiting for them to condense closer… and let the thunder fly. One of the bugs flat out exploded, while another crashed onto the ground, yet I completely missed the last one. I tried to fire again and all I got was a click, I forgot it only had two shots! I looked back to the bug as it got close enough and bit onto my tail, again. I let out a scream and magically yanked it off, and realized something…

I could hold it in magic rather easily, it could only wiggle in this magic imprisonment. It was thrashing as it pushed it far away from me, more than far enough for nothing to splatter and pulled out the .45 pistol again and took aim, the first bit of real target practice I’ve had in years…. Everything recently has been in a panic, but real experience. I was getting ready to pull the trigger and realized I was hesitating. Holding it still was making me sympathetic. It looked harmless now, but I know better, the wasteland will kill those who don’t act, so I just need to shoot. No reason not to, I just needed to point and… fire. Pull the trigger, see if I can aim, so c’mon Dreamrush, fire!

I heard the bang before I felt my squeeze of the trigger, my shot wasn’t perfect, just enough to kill it. Looks like I’m decent with a small gun like this, and I’m learning how to survive the wasteland, and this was the first thing I needed to learn.

But why did I have to feel bad about it?

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

Nothing for hours besides small groups of bugs, which have all been easy due to magic, I don’t know how Earth Ponies survived without it. I’ve been hoping for some kind of shack, ruin, or even one of those factories with killer robots that I’ve heard so much about. I’ve learned that humming my favorite songs helps with the loneliness, but only just. I’ve never been so far away from a town for so long before, so this was a new feeling.

I hated it.

At least I had my favorite song to think about, it made the house durable. I was hoping for something non-dangerous to happen, even a trash can to look through when a loud crack echoed around me. Panicking I whipped out my pistol and started to look around for the source, but Instead heard yelling… Yelling? That means ponies! I found myself rushing towards the sounds further along the path till I saw some walls from a building, and ponies to the side of it, with the rest of a town behind them, arguing about a bit of decoration that fell off from it. They were both blue and whiteish gray. The little town past them had fewer buildings than Our Town and was built similarly and just as ruined. I noticed the ground looked different in certain areas… almost as if something heavy was dragged around in a circle, it was strangely flat. There was a strange crater in the middle of Rainbowless Falls, with a tiny, curved, path-like ravine that was empty, and it felt like it was missing something.

I couldn’t help but wonder why they have no walls, it seemed so dangerous to live like that, maybe they just don’t care? Thinking about it was hurting my head, so I focused on the town. The closer I got the more of an ‘adventure’ vibe I got, I wonder why that is…

That’s when laughter erupted beside me, the twins with the decoration, two stallions I could tell now, were chuckling and looking at me.

“Hey lass, couldn’t help but notice… You ran into a buncha bloatsprites, right?”

“Hehe, you look like a mess.”

“Bloatsprites? Are those what-” I was cut off by these two… dunderheads, breaking into laughter again. I could feel my face scrunching up in annoyance.

“Beasties that got your tail? Yep! They like to rip and tear at just about anything that moves, be glad you didn’t find their hive!”

“Haha yeah! You’d be gone girl, no more Orange.”

“Oh shaddup you, that ain’t funny. A bite mark on the tail is funny, some mare dying ain’t.”

“Uh…” the more dull stallion didn’t seem to know how to respond, and the not-so-mean stallion just snorted and looked back at me, his face looked squashed and flat like... Old war art.

“Now, welcome to Rainbowless Falls and all that, you must be new to traveling if you don’t even know that, where ya from?”

“I’m from… I’m from Our Town, south of here” saying the name was starting to hurt me, it even got stuck in my throat for a moment. C’mon rush, snap out of it. You gotta grow stronger and out of that.

“Our town?! What kinda town is named after some unity friendship bullshit?! Bwahah!”

“Y-Yah! Stupid Friendship! Haha!”

“There ya go Huffle! Now that’s funny!” they both kept laughing and making similar jokes at my town’s expense but I didn’t (or more so wouldn’t) stick around to hear more. My eyes were set on a target: The biggest building I could see, I hardly had a plan and was just hoping it would lead to something, maybe meet somepony I could ask about… Oh, what do I ask first? Food and water? Supplies like meds and ammo? About the mare in strange armor? I’m thinking survival first, she can wait and I might be going the wrong way already.

When I got to the building I was welcomed by a pleasing smell that was almost invasive from how the rest of my week was, and then was followed by the ever lovely smell of alcohol. I’ve never been much of a drinker, but if I had the caps to spare, I'd forget the rest of the day.

The first thing that clicked in my head was the music, they had a radio! Oh, holy goddess, have I missed music, I was just hoping for something I could tolerate, and to my disappointment, it was a song I hardly cared for by Songbird Serenade, but I would gladly tolerate it. I hurried into the warm atmosphere, which was what I believed to be packed, all the different ponies talking with another or eating (more so drinking) quietly.

Nopony gave me any attention as I entered, no pony laughing at my bitten tail, I took a seat at the counter on one of those circular chairs that used to spin, with my seat rusted into place. The mare who was handling everypony was taking her time to get to me, which gave me time to think, yet I didn’t get to think at all as a familiar voice came in through the radio of the wonderful DJ-Pon3.

“Good evening Wastelanders, DJ-Pon3 with more on the wasteland. Firstly, an update on that little northern town of… Well, ‘Our Town’, strange name to report on.”

My heart sunk, ponies knew what happened? Would there be any good news? Did.. they know?

“It seems like there may have been ponies there after the attack, dead ponies seemed to have been moved and most of the safes have been opened, there might have been survivors with how quickly that was.”

Oblivious to the world as I listened, my mind was jumping from one extreme to the next, wondering how to tell the DJ that I’m alive, and of the armored mare?

A slam in front of me made me aware of my surroundings, the mare who seemed to run the joint was in front of me with a deadly glare, her stance was wide and made her look bigger than she was, and she spoke in a cold voice, her blood-red eyes matched her mane and the booze matched her coat.

“Hello miss… what brings a pony like you here?” I found myself leaning away from her, she was behaving intensely as if she was trying to fire daggers from her eyes, and she didn’t even let me talk. “Because your friends were here not too long ago… you looking for them?”

“My...Friends? I don’t follow what-” she cut me off, and her body began to shake in what I thought at first to be rage, but I noticed her face. She was worried.

“Right, of course not. That’s definitely NOT the same armor your friend had. I’ve tolerated your type for a while, but you all doing THAT,” she motioned towards her radio as she spoke before she continued. “I won’t be allowing you here, no matter how you threaten. Listen to the radio to find them.”

“I- what? My armor? But-” I looked down at what I was wearing and it clicked, and I croaked out “wait! Not! T-That! Killed! I uh, I’m from Our Town! I had to kill them and had no other protection!”

Her stare felt like it lasted forever, and she finally sighed while bringing a hoof to her temple.

“Oh, sweet stale biscuits… Here I am yelling at some ol’ poor survivor. I’m sorry about that, Gal. How can I help ya then?”

“Uhm..” it took me a minute to recover from that… okay, multiple, before I spoke. “I just uh... Have you seen a mare with strange armor… it has a strange ghost on it?”

“Strange ghost? Can’t say I have, no ma’am.”

“Oh, well… What about supplies? I could-”

“You can buy things like guns and armor from the square building that looks like it could fall apart at any second, tell them Hightop sent ya, and for food, ya can look no further!” I got the feeling that she has practiced that line before…

“And are there any doctors I can buy from..? I don’t have much on me at the moment.”

“You’d want Mineva Essence, it’s the building decorated in those yellow medical boxes that have faded white, it stands out.” food, ammo, and a possible new set of armor to avoid being confused again… Almost everything I needed!

For more caps than I had.

“Thank you, Hightop was it? Do you know if she might need any help? Or anypony else? I’m a traveling doctor myself…”

“Uh, nope not really. You said you’re a doctor?” she started to look over my person, and she suddenly clapped, with her voice getting louder. “Oh! Actually, Starfury has been looking for a pony JUST like you, he has a job you could do, hell he might just give you those drugs you need!”

“Starfury? Where can I-”

“Inside the taaall building near the old tracks, is that all I can help you with?” I wanted to tell her that was all, but she kept bringing up more offers and ‘deals’ that I had to decline, her costs were way too high for me, and I have to see what the other dealers have, and as I was leaving I heard her yell out “Oh! Ask him about your ghost gal! He might know a thing or two ‘bout it!”

The tall building that she mentioned was instantly insight, standing at what felt like two floors higher than the rest of the buildings. Nopony else was as intrusive as those two twins as I traveled through the small town, and everything felt so… normal, besides those odd paths and craters that could have been ponds. The ponies here were living perfectly fine, just as I used to, just like everypony I ever knew, why did seeing this just hurt? It almost felt like… regret.

Before I knew it, the towering building was right in front of me, it felt strange to me that this was their leader’s house when everything was so similar to home, yet their mayor’s home was vastly different. I pressed my hoof to the door and it opened with ease, no lock, and seemingly no guards inside. It was strangely empty inside and hardly anything besides a few chairs, couch, and stairs, no other relics of the previous world.

“Hello? Is anypony here?” I began to step inside as a new voice shot from the top of the steps, it felt soft, mixed with a heavy, unmoving nature behind it.

“Ah! Yes up here! I’m coming, I’m coming! No more screaming now!” Starfury, I assumed, yelled. His voice held enough authority to have me wait in place. I heard hooves going back and forth for a moment above until the unicorn showed his face and- wait, that’s not a unicorn…

His horn was thick and moved similar to the end of a branch, with a red stripe across it, his mane was also growing around his chest and neck, his tail wasn’t just hair, it was long and slim which ended in a small patch of matching purple hair, and finally, it seemed like he had scales on his back.

“Yes yes, what? What is it Pony? Is there a way I can help or are you just visiting randomly and looking around? I don’t have time to host guests, unfortunately.” he tapped his hoof impatiently for an answer, and I was just staring at this odd creature.

“W...what are you even??” was all I could force out.

“A pony, obviously.” wait, what? He most definitely was not a pony, and I was trying to think of the nicest way to say ‘no you’re not’ when he smiled and chuckled. “No? Okay, bad joke I apologize, I’m a Kirin.” he said it as if that would answer everything, Kirin look so cool if this is what they all look like.

“Alright..? I do have one thing I need to ask…” I described the pony in ghostly armor again, and he leaned backward almost as if to think of how to say something.

“Pony in ‘ghost’ armor, eh? I wouldn’t have called it that, I was thinking she looked dressed in ice, why, what about her?”

She… she was here? I’m on her trail!? How in the goddess’s name… my heartfelt like it had crashed, I didn’t think I’d get on her trail this quick, I don’t think I’m ready. I can see her uncaring face already, I-

“Yooou-whoooo, ponygirl? Are you okay? You’re looking all panicked, you remember how to breathe right?”

“Y-yeah I… sorry.” I took in a deep breath to try and calm myself and my racing heart, this Kirin thing staying idle in front of me, and it helped me calm down.

“Right, bad question, I see I see. Yes, we did, she was happy about some job she did and so she was a tad rowdy while she was here, before leaving towards Crystal City in the west, anything else lady?”

Crystal City? I’ve never heard of that place, I knew of the ‘near’ location, perhaps it was simply far away? So far north and in the mountains, it’s understandable that they’d be so far separated from each other. I couldn’t help but picture buildings made out of strangely bright, multi-colored crystals where everything was shining, how silly!

It was here when I finally got around to asking about why I was sent to him, and as soon as I said I was a doctor, his eyes lit up in joy, almost literally it felt.

“Oh perfect! You’re here for the job... You’ll have to do, the only doctor here refuses to go anywhere… I can tell you don’t have much on you, so all the supplies I give you for the job you can keep, for a fraction of your pay. You’ll be joining a small group in a small hunt, okay? That’s all, keep them safe. You can meet them to the north of town, where you’ll be going to a few abandoned factories nearby, they’re in utter ruins, so nothing can hide well, okay? Just a quick hunt against those who want to harm us.”

“I’ve done this kind of thing once, actually! I follow, sir.” All I had to do was make sure no one died from the animal or animals they needed to hunt? Seems like an easy job to do. “Of course I can do that!”

“Wonderful, you go over to them when you’re ready and they’ll hand off the supplies to you, come back as soon as you’re done, thanks pony!”

A bunch of trained hunters and a doctor? This would be fine.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

I HATE my big mouth! This is anything but fine! These aren’t animals, they’re raiders! PONIES shooting at us! Why wasn’t I warned about this?!

Part of the tree I was hiding behind erupted into splinters, reminding me how thin all our cover was… I assumed. I could only see two of them, that meant our Griffin and Miss Sizzle were unaccounted for. My shotgun was useless here, they were elevated, covered, and had range, leaving me with just this old looking .45

“HEY SPOT! Figure out how many yet!?” ‘Blast’ as he called himself yelled, shoving his third… Magazine? Clip? Into his rifle which was in the air floating beside him.

“Seven! Six up top and one somewhere our level, two of ‘em not looking this way!” a faded gray earth pony, who looked like they could hide in soot yelled. An explosion of dust struck where she was moments ago, pelting her and her damaged battle saddle with grime.

More shots hitting wood ringed out, and Blast jerked around the tree and took three quick shots before getting back behind the tree, and I could see his tail get torn apart by bullets.

“Did I get one?!”

‘Spot’ (I swear those weren’t their real names) looked over for a brief moment and she cried out in pain, and yanked back behind cover, crimson sprouting from her upper arm.

“N-No idea! I’ve been hit..!” She had been shot, which meant I needed to get to her through a hail of bullets.

“Hey, lass! It don’t look too bad from here, don’t worry about it for now!”

“But she was shot!”

“It ain’t gonna be worth it, Gah why’d we get somepony new to this!? Just wait for them to stop shooting and DO NOT HESITATE! Pop out and shoot, blindly if you have to! Be unpredictable! Need all the firepower we can to blow em back!” he pushed his head back around the corner and fired twice before ducking back behind it, as a voice in the distance screamed. We had to beat them before we could leave… wait, blow them back?

“Hey Blast! C-can this help?!” I screamed while pulling out the two sticks of dynamite I had with me, and Blast’s eyes went wide and jumped slightly in a contained cheer.

“You damned idiot! Of course they will, now toss ‘em to the wall, it’s crumbling already!”

“I don’t know If I can throw it that f-”

“Don’t then! Just hold it in your magic and push ‘em in that direction! Keep moving them so they can’t shoot ‘em out of the air!” I had no rebuttal to that, I had to push these explosives towards ponies? The idea of what happened to the dog I blew up happening to a pony made me feel sick, twice as much as when I lit the sticks. I couldn’t do anything else but thrust the sticks into the air blindly, forcing them to weave wildly in the air. The sounds of bullets hitting our cover stopped, and I heard somepony scream out to... Do something, he didn’t get to say it before the explosions went off and I felt my magic grasp fade, with the sound of metal creaking and crashing. Both Blast and Spot suddenly pushed out from their spots and advanced, while blast started to fire, and only began to follow them after I realized what they were doing.

The ‘factory’ was incredibly small, and now was missing the front part of it. Most of the second floor was laying on the first floor, with dazed and wounded ponies on top of it, out in the open and being filled with lead. Blast didn’t hesitate to shoot them, I didn’t raise my pistol because it seemed like he had it, and within seconds all six of them were down, bleeding, dying.

That’s when the seventh raider crawled into view, behind Spot with a knife in her muzzle, she didn’t see me and was in the open. She was still trying, even though her friends were dead?

“Spot! Behind!” was what I yelled out, while magically yanked on the knife in their muzzle, and surprisingly was able to yank it out. I figured without a weapon she would surrender, but instead the raider dove onto Spot as she spun, biting into her neck!

Spot cried out and shoved herself against one of the trees, yet the pony held on. Blast raised his rifle towards them, but she had Spot as a shield. He began to move in an arc to try and get a shot off, but the raider would shift and drag spot to keep her as a shield, leaving herself open to me as if they thought I didn’t have a weapon while keeping her teeth in. She was slower than the ‘bloatsprites’ from before, an easy shot. I raised my pistol just like against those bugs and aimed, I didn’t have to move so aiming felt easier, but having a pony in its sights felt different.

I pulled the trigger and watched a spot on her back burst into red, she let out a pained cry and fell over. I thought we were done with her, no need to hurt her further, yet Blast went above her and pulled the trigger, and killed the raider with a single bullet. I must have gasped because he looked at me, and his horn began to glow, yanking me forward beside her while he continued to the building.

Fine, fine, he’s right. Spot needs to be checked, her throat was bleeding enough to get me to worry, yet a quick look over showed nothing vital was hit, just the muscles on the side of her neck, it’ll be strainful to turn her head for a while. I had to do a quick job, only wrapping it with one of the magic bandages, and having her drink half of one of my few health potions.

By the time I was done with her, the firing stopped. I looked at Spot who just nodded, so I assumed we’re done here and began to search for Blast, Sizzle, and... The griffin whose name I couldn’t remember. To my surprise, they were completely fine, and looting bodies on the other side of the building while listening to Blast complain about me.

“...Gone dropped a wee child in our care who doesn’t even know the essentials. What was that oak-horn thinkin’ with that? She don’t shoot to kill, hesitated, and let one of these scum-breathing good for nothings touch Keena… You know she had dynamite? She didn’t tell us and brought em out and fucking asked. And even then..” he just continued for a good while and had Sizzle noticed me and said nothing. It hurt hearing him talk, not because his words were mean, but they were true. He went from my armor choice and wearing it in public, to my weapons being inadequate. He didn’t stop until he saw me, to which he just said “well, did you at least do your job?”

“Yes and… You’re right, I’m sorry.” my voice wanted to show emotion, but I was trying to force myself to sound not as hurt. I had to learn, didn’t I? “I didn’t think it was going to be like this, but that’s still my fault. I could have gotten somepony killed, couldn’t I?” Blast’s cold gaze stayed still, and he walked up to me and responded with blunt anger, his hoof to my jaw which knocked me down.

“Of course! Do you have brahmin shit for brains? Because of your failure, Spot was hurt worse than she already was! When you’re in a team, you have to trust them, and I shouldn’t have put my trust in you, and your kind words are useless out here! You need to grow a spine before you get a pony killed, and learn to take life out here seriously!” he finished in a growl, and stomped away. Sizzle and the griffin began to follow him, but the griffin stopped beside me.

“You feel that pain? Remember it and learn.” was all he said before walking past, leaving me alone to think about what I’ve failed to do. I failed to keep a pony safe, and she could have died. My feelings were swelling up, I don’t normally keep emotions down, but now that I was alone I couldn’t help but let myself cry. They felt like fresh wounds that slowly cut around my heart, I hardly knew them yet they trusted me… I didn’t take this seriously and believed this was going to be easy caps, and I thought wrong.

I couldn’t let myself just sit there, so I crawled into the nearest somewhat intact room: a dirty bathroom. I didn’t pay attention to the time, but nopony came looking for me and I didn’t blame them. I let my sorrow and anger out on myself, telling me to do better next time, and that I can’t afford to do that again.

My emotions got back under control not after long, and I found myself staring at one of those bright yellow, pink butterfly medical boxes you find in just about any bathroom. I couldn’t help but wonder if anything was inside and… Nothing, been emptied long ago. Though I noticed something strange about it, strangely it was in… rather great condition, besides the faded yellow. I could even tell the pink butterfly on it was a butterfly, which I was used to being so faded the pink was gone.

An idea came to me, in order to do better and have others trust me I’d need to be quick, but I’m a doctor first. I should have quick access to what I’d need to keep someone alive, not just keep it in the same bag as the other things I carry. If I needed to change, this would be the first thing I do.

It was hardly attached to the wall and came off with ease. I didn’t have the right things to turn it into a makeshift saddlebag at the moment, so I strapped it to the underside of my other bag. I was crying just moments ago, and now I'm smiling like an idiot. Although I’ll have to do something about that awful coloring, it stands out way too much, especially on me. I’ll need to paint it, why did the Ministry of Peace have to have it colored after her?

Calmed down and focused, I left the breaking room to make my lonesome way back towards the road, yet to my surprise, there were ponies (and a griffin) waiting for me, and blast gave me another hard look.

“You look surprisingly happy… Good, c’mon Doc, we’re done here and tired.” it was completely different from what I was expecting, no laying into or anything, nor did they leave me. The group started to walk ahead and I followed, thinking about which question to ask first. “No, we wouldn’t leave you here. That’s dangerous and you’re still with us, rule two; No pony left behind!” he’s done a complete shift from how he was just treating me, why was that?

“Why are you being so nice to me when you just… said all that? I don’t get it, you even hit me!” his response was a softer blow to my arm, one that might bruise but otherwise harmless.

“Yep, I did. Great memory there runt, so no excuses if you forget what you learned today, I’ll punch ya to Canterlot if you ever do, ya hear!?'' What in the world were these mixed messages? I was lost with him already! “Good! Now let’s get back and get some fucking rest, that was awful.” Spot or Keena, I guessed, gave a silent, yet exaggerated nod as Sizzle (Did she have a fake name too? What about Blast??) let out a smaller cheer when the pale griffin finally spoke in a raspyish voice and I realized this was the first time he spoke.

“Can you make something with meat this time for me Siz, please?”

“Aww I just can’t stand the smell, it makes me gag. Don’t blame me if I hurl over that nasty stuff Whisp!” wait a moment, Whisp, like Whisper? Did… Did they call themselves these nicknames based on what they do? I can’t tell if that’s strangely sweet or just stupid!

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

The Not-Pony was counting out caps behind his desk with a grimace, regretful look. The band of mercenaries had already left with their money, another job from the mayor, and offered to let me rest with them in their lodging, and I was thinking of taking them up when the Not-Pony asked to talk to me, so there I was, waiting for him to say his part. I’ve been waiting for five minutes by the time he started to speak.

“So… from what Blast said, I take it you’re not a battle medic…?”

“Wha..what? No! Of course not, I’m just a doctor that helped my home clear out bad animals! Why would you think I’m a trained fighter?” He sighed and hung his head on his desk, hoofs on his temples.

“Gah..that… Fucking idiot of a barkeeper!” he screamed, and his whole body changed to an almost black color, as flames grew where his hair was. I let out a sharp cry and reached into my bag, grabbing the last of my water and dumping it on him. Steam filled the room, and he stared at me with a strangely annoyed look. “I’m fine... I’m fine. Just mad. I light on fire when I’m mad. Don’t make a kirin mad, okay? Give me a second, just let me breathe.” I just nodded and didn’t say anything, he leaned away from anything flammable and let himself calm down, even changing back to his normal colors.

“You... You good now..? No more fire?”

“No more fire, sorry, sorry… The barkeep who sent you over here, Hightop? I asked her to send me fighters… I’m so sorry about this, I didn’t mean to send you in harm's way. I’m giving you extra caps for that, keep the medicine as I said before, and I’ll try to help you with anything else you need, alright?”

“Thank you uhm, Starfury was it? That’ll be great! I can maybe even get some non...threatening armor. Frankly, I don’t know how I’ll sleep tonight after all this and… do you by chance have anything I can use for recoloring something? It’s nothing special, It’s just something I want to do for myself.”

“I can definitely look around and ask to see if somepony might have paint or something… But, if you’re still hurting for caps and don’t plan on sleeping anytime soon, I do have a much less dangerous job I haven’t been able to give to anypony, and you’re a doctor, you know how to treat radiation in some way, better than any of us here besides our own lazy one… It’s an investigation, Ponies think that our water supply might have some sort of radiation leaking into it, some are starting to get sick. We pull mostly from a well, it has an old water system that we’re blessed to have work, just go into our sewers and see if you can find the problem.”

Definitely sounded easier, no getting shot at sounded great too. He was assuming I’d take it, he was right, I accepted. I’m smart, I’m a unicorn so I can pull a leak or whatever out of the water, and I’ve treated minor rad poisoning before. Oh, don’t get ahead of yourself Dreamrush, learn! I started to repeat that to myself to take this as its own mission, don’t compare it to other slightly similar situations, and don’t make the same mistakes I’ve already made. I was confident and fully expected this to go south somehow.

I left the mayor’s office and headed towards the well, and apparently, all I needed to do was just climb in, it had stairs and everything! I descended into the rank darkness, with only my horn to light the way, it wasn’t much but it was what I had to- oh, an idea! I pulled out the empty bottle in my possession and held it out in front of me, acting like a forward light… It wasn’t perfect, but it would do.

The smell wasn’t as bad as I expected, I was thinking it’d be like some pre-war sewage system but honestly, it reminded me of the caves near Our Town, except it was filled with water in the middle. I didn’t feel comfy walking without a weapon out, so I had my Kukri out beside my head.

This wasn’t any grand adventure or anything, and these large rats were the only thing to jump out at me. Holding those rats still with what I was already holding was tiring, but not straining. I was starting to feel like an exterminator as I killed more and more of these rats, which were thankfully much easier for me to kill than ponies with relatable faces, or even feral dogs, these things were ugly… Oh, maybe they were the issue and there was a nest? I could see that being an issue if left alone long enough.

I jumped over a small gap between the side paths that had long broken off where a door was waiting for me. I gave it a shove and it didn’t budge, and I had no lock picks to even try to open it… So I kicked it, stupid door.

The further I traveled, the more I stumbled across these cursed doors, taunting me for having nothing to pick at their loot-protecting locks, each one whispering the wonderful food and water and hints that may be behind it.

I was getting tired and my legs were hurting, that’s not a good sign, I’ve only been at this for like an hour or two, how out of shape am I? I had to sit down, the old walkway was cool to the touch and not comfy, but it worked. A break was what I needed, a moment of reprise to refuel, and- I forgot to buy food. Oh, dear goddesses in the sky Dreamrush what am I doing?! Great, I can’t stay down here that long now. I should probably even head back now before I go too far in, I couldn’t help but sigh at my stupidity and I let my legs slip into the water as I yelled at myself, and stopped. The water felt odd and gross, but it looked normal... I yanked my hoofs out as quickly as I could, it had to be radiated, right? That didn’t feel normal, not at all. But if I could feel it, it had to be strong, so I had to be close right? But then I could feel something else, rumbling over my body.

Crrkkrit...crrkkit..

My ears flattened, the strong sound trying to push me over. Whatever that was, was either close or huge… I mean it must be large, but if it’s not close then it must be gigantic. With a groan I rose, I was pretty sure I wasn’t suffering from any radiation poisoning at this time, but I’m going to avoid the water if I can. I approached the next corner and peeked around it, to another empty hall.

Crrrkkrit…

It’s coming from this direction, where the water is flowing from. I found myself getting closer to the ground as I crept forward, stealth was never my specialty obviously, but if I’m dealing with an animal, it’ll be easier to hide from it...unless it had a good nose.

I got to the next corner and looked around the next one, and finally saw something that might be what I’m looking for: A green cloud spread over the next area, it looks dense but unmoving, like a fog wall. It wouldn’t take much to just trot up and wave my hoof through the foggy area, and as it seemed to roll away, more seemed to replace it.

Getting closer made my back tingle, yet the air felt fine even when I got within arms reach. I slowly gathered breath and blew into it, and disrupted the smooth wall, flowing it back into the deep mist.

Crrrkkrit… Rbbbrt..

The mist pushed forward in response to the sound and pushed it into my face. Radiation coated me, causing me to scramble away and gag. It felt awful, and where it touched made my body feel off. I was looking fine, but that was intense…then the smell hit me, and tears swelled in my eyes, taking everything within me to not drink the water to get the awful taste and smell down... I looked back to the fog wall while wiping my eyes clear and thought I saw something moving, and heard something that sounded like a whip shooting out, and now I definitely saw something shooting out at me! I rolled into the water and felt a crash into the ground where I was, and saw a fleshy tube-like thing punch where I was, before reeling away into the radiation. Whatever it was was large, it had to be twice my size at least.

Plan, I need a plan to kill it, and the only thing I can think of is to just shoot into the mist blindly and hope for the best - but that feels stupid, I shouldn’t rely on that, what if-

A blast of green, ethereal gas burst out of the radiation wall and enveloped me, and I could feel that sickening feeling from the water again, tenfold. I cried out from the sheer shock and turned back around. It could shoot that radiation gas?! It just had to be the source!

Stumbling back around the corner into clear air, with what felt like twelve meals ready to shoot up my throat, I stumbled forward with a hazy vision. That… That radiation had to kill quickly, how could something survive in that? It can fire it blindly too, how big did it have to be… wait, big?

The world’s simplest plan struck me, why didn’t I think of that sooner? I brought the Kukri floating around me down to directly behind, and pointed it where the beast should be walking out of as I started to gag, the stench from the mist that I was in reaching me again… it was awful, worse than before... Radiation and smell, this is the worst..! It was hard to focus ahead, and with what I felt was enough distance turned and waited for anything moving in the fog.

It was a predator stalking what it thought to be something meek and defenseless, and it’s seemingly sluggish body appeared in the mist. I thrust my kukri forward into the mist, letting my telekinesis tell me when I struck. It sailed true, and I felt it dig deep into something as the monster roared in pain. Bullse-

I was so ecstatic that my plan worked, that I didn’t hear the whip sound or see the long fleshy tube shoot out at me, nor my weapon sticking out of the tip of it, buried deep inside as my own hilt slammed into my head, and I turned weightless. I felt no pain for a fleeting moment, and realized I was looking at rushing water pass me… no, wait. I was rushing past the water for a good four seconds before splashing into the canal and started to feel pain on the side of my head.

Coughing and gasping as I began to taste something metal, I slowly sat up in the water and saw a somewhat white tooth float past me, it’s roots red. What just happened..? Looking around felt like a mistake, and caused my vision to blur. I could only see vague colors and shapes, such as a green wall, and black walls to both uneven sides. That thing was still in there, and it had my knife in it. Standing only hurt my head, my legs felt fine but caused vision to shake again. I needed to fix this, so I began to open up my medical box.

The whip sound echoed through the tunnel again before I could pull anything out, the whip means the flesh. I Shoved myself to the side and felt my body crash against the cold stone as a rumble echoed out, the source inches from me. As long as I move when the crack happens, I should be… Cccrack!

Another one echoed out, and I ended up slamming myself to the wall as a second fleshy tube hit where I was again, it has multiple!? I can’t rest now, who knows how many it has. I forced out the first health potion I could, causing several clinks and clatters on the floor around me and uncorked it, beginning my retreat. I don’t care what I just dropped, I had to move, NOW!

I had forgotten the taste of a healing potion, it feels like it’s been just about forever since I last had to have one while conscious, I made sure to not drink it all at once, drinking it all is more wasteful than not, and my vision instantly started to come back. I had put more distance between me and it than I thought, it was out of the radiation.

It was what I had always imagined a toad to look like, but large, mutated, and a strangely smooth yellow body. Multiple eyes that had a look of hunger, with its tongue sticking out to its side slightly, the hilt of my blade sticking out of it, buried deep into the flesh. That was a tongue it was attacking me with, so it must have more than one too, it’s very breath was leaking radiation as if it was a balloon full of it.

Rbbbrt..

It’s tongue cracked through the air again and launched at me, blade hilt pointed at me once again. Instead of moving to the side, I made my horn glow and grab the blade, and yanked it to the side. It was enough to force it off course and slam beside me, and as quickly as I could, I yanked my sawed-off out and started pulling the trigger as much as I could to the tongue. I assumed it would saw through it and detach it, but no. While it looked shredded it was still very well connected after the two shots.

CRROAAAAK!!!

The cry was ear piercing and it took everything to not grab onto my ears as rubble dripped onto the creature from above, I had to focus. I’m not used to reloading this sawed-off yet, luckily the giant frog seemed distracted. Unfortunately, my weapon couldn’t even blast through its tongue of all things, a frontal attack wouldn’t work.

Wait, rubble? That makes sense, these tunnels must be old and out of maintenance. I aimed the barrel up towards the ceiling and unloaded as the frog calmed down and aimed back towards me, it’s cheeks beginning to puff up as it inhaled… as the ceiling broke down on top of it, radiation shooting out from the bloated frog as it was buried. I made sure to back up in case it caused a chain reaction and grabbed back onto what I dropped and pulled it back… Putting it all away beside my one Radaway, I needed this for sure.

Bright, orange, and tasted nasty, blugh… I don’t think I could ever get used to that. I gagged the last of it down and stared back down to the destroyed tunnel in front of me, the frog was mostly covered in rubble, thankfully it didn’t cause a cave-in and more importantly, killed the toad thing. I couldn’t help but lean back and fall over and stare, coming to the realization that there was no way to clear out the radiation, there was nothing else to do in here. I wasn’t feeling like exploring all the locked doors or to see if it lead to any place, so after I let myself rest and began to check over myself. I was only showing minor signs of radiation poisoning, which were quickly fading. Radiation was nasty, that all felt awful and was only the start of it, radiation is terrifying.

Well, my job here was done, so I got up and began my way back through the dank tunnels, I felt tired and had a headache but I couldn’t feel better. I did this right, sure maybe I could have handled it better, but there were no giant errors, I did a job right!

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

Sleep evaded me in the room I bought, and I was just proud of myself if I’m honest with myself. Instead, I ended up thinking about three rules for me to follow: Rule 1) Ask Why. Everything out here happens for a reason and knowing why may help. Rule 2) Observe. Keep an eye open and be observant. Rule 3) Help and believe. If I’m traveling with somepony, or even working with somepony, I need to protect them and believe they’ll do their part. Yet at the same time… I know I shouldn’t blindly trust everypony, there was going to need to be an exception or two to that rule…

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

The Orange pony travels around, each building they come out brighter.

Given a gift by fire, the light fades and they join the crowd.

Pretty lights shine, and engulfed by a dark light.

The dark light swims to Orange, filling it’s head.

A lock shatters, and Orange vanishes.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

Not quite sure when it happened, but my body succumbed and I had fallen asleep, just to wake up what must have been hours later, and looking outside made me think it must be midday, always hard to tell without a clock. My dream this time was a bit different than what I was used to, and while the vanishing part of it had me a little worried, nothing violent happened, so I think I’ll be fine. Regardless of the dream, I wanted to go through the town. I decided to keep the armor I had been using off and walk around the town with just my little vest and-

Well don’t I feel stupid, I forgot that the vest had a holster. It was small and would be a great fit for my pistol, where I could keep it close. The darn raider armor blocked it, and I never really used it before. I pulled the .45 auto-pistol out and put it right against my chest, and head out. My first stop was directly below me: the tavern I stopped at and talked to Hightop to buy a meal.

“Are you kiddin’ Little Orange? I treated you like my morning shit!” okay gross… “This one meal will be for free, I’ll even find the least expired box of Bronca Cheese I got! Least I could do for ya after my little insult, and I guess because you’re protecting the town, or whatever.” her prideful attitude shone through more than ever, but it gave me a free meal and I was starving… So why would I say no? Though I did need to correct her on something as she got down to look through her stock.

“I’m uh, not going out to attack those raiders again. I’m not a ‘battle medic’, just a traveling doctor, I guess at least.” she would glance up at me, and toss up a green and yellow box in front of me with a hint of a glare on her eyes.

“Then the lass who did protect our town once, or whatever! T-that part doesn’t matter, alright? Just forget about that bit!” she snorted out the last bit, and I couldn’t help but wonder if she only cared about my view of her.. And I realized that she wasn’t even cooking anything for me, just gave me an old box with food for me to eat out of, no effort behind it at all.

“Well… thank you, I’ll probably come back in a little bit after I get paid for the trip ahead. Though I won’t have that many bits and I’m just learning out here… Can we make a deal?” her body language instantly changed, and I swear I saw a glint in her eye, just like I swear I saw a puff of dust come out of the box I was opening, I hooked her. Now, this was familiar territory; haggling. Selling medical supplies to traveling ponies was interesting enough, and I found myself trying to get out with the better deal, and now I was on the other side. “I just want a bit of a discount, nothing special just something you’d give to the ponies- and uh, kirin, that live here. And I’ll brag about the amazing pony who helped me in my time of need, giving me food and the needs to begin to survive out of the kindness of her heart, and her amazing deals, best out here in the mountains.”

“Oh.. Hmm~” she began to sway back and forth on her hoofs in contemplation, I could have just waited, but I decided to speed her up with a yawn, make her panic and think I was about to drop this deal for her. “Well, I might as well give ya that discount for helping our hindquarters! So why not? I’ll give ya the discount, have I ever mentioned my cooking? I got some great eggs and even some fresh mutfruit..”

I honestly was expecting to walk out with just over half my bits, but the food wasn't as expensive as I was expecting it to be. I bought purely the things that would stay good for my times out here, and a few pounds of it too, no way was I going to starve out here. I also may have splurged a bit, buying this casserole thing she made, it didn’t even taste that good but the warmth that I felt while eating it just felt so relaxing and rewarding.

Next stop was for supplies, and I instantly traded out that raider armor for some nice leather bindings that with that trade, was next to nothing in caps. I felt more exposed I’ll admit, it was not as protective as the bigger, clunkier armor I just had, but there was no way I would wear that anymore. Luckily for me the pony running the generals store also had ammunition for my pistol, I didn’t feel lacking in it quite yet, but almost doubling my ammo felt nice, really nice.

Second to last was the medic that I heard about her not wanting to go out of the town or help those silly mercenaries attack the crazed raiders, she seemed inexperienced honestly, and I traded a few of my ‘super-secret’ methods for a few healing potions… how hard is it to understand to not drink a whole healing potion at once?! Unluckily for me, she refused to budge on anything else and I had to pay more than I wanted to for Magic bandages, Painkillers, Rad-aways, and Radsafes. Overall though, I spent less than I had expected too, I still had over fifty bits, and with payment coming up, I hit the jackpot!

Finally, to Starfury, I returned to give him a recap of my hopping adventure. His brow raised like the mountains the more I told, and by the end, his head had lowered far to match his lackluster emotions.

“Ohh great… Thought it’d be something simple but no, it never is… Again, girl, I’m sorry to hear it went worse than expected. Glad you’re alright though, and hey! You went and killed a Buforad for us, and it was contained in a small space, good for you!” curiosity struck me, and I turned my head and asked a question I’d regret.

“Wait, why does the small space matter in this?”

“Oh simple, if you were outside you’d be dead. They use their strong legs to their advantage to keep ponies from running away and out of their radiation if they can’t just snatch them outright with their sticky tongues.”

“Sticky… tongues?” but… but one hit me, and it felt solid and… metallic... My knife was in it, did… did my knife hit me and not the tongue and...

I almost died.

“Yeppers, but good job! You went and killed it for us, so I’ll even throw in a bonus for you, extra hundred caps for saving me some hard work, and clearing out the source of the radiation, and even a ticket to the show tonight!” I hardly heard him, my excitement almost killed me. Don’t celebrate early, don’t celebrate early, don’t celebrate…

“Hellloooooo?” Starfury was in my face, waving his hoofs. “You’re doing it again, staring off into nothing. I got your payment right here Orange, go on take it, enjoy the show tonight.”

“Show? What?” his sigh to my accidentally ignoring him was loud and over the top, as he held up a ticket that he had set on the bag of bits in front of me.

“A traveling show pony showed up last night asking for a place to perform, it’s a rarity to see ponies selling entertainment, that I can’t say no. The town just loves them too much, even if it’s awful. I was able to get a few for free, so why not take one and relax? It’s not every day you’ll get one.” he returned it to my newfound loot pile, all smiles.

Showponies, I’ve heard of them before but none ever came to Our Town. I couldn’t help but wonder why they’d come up here and not my dinky little town. Looking over the ticket revealed that one side was painted, and the other side was a pre-war newspaper. The pretty side showed a poorly drawn gray unicorn in a cape, in a simple over the top pose with childlike stars drawn around him, with ‘valid 4 when son is goin away’ written on the other side, and it looked amazing!

I gathered up my newfound bits and started to head out, but Starfury groan and whistled out.

“Hey hey! Didn’t you hear? I got ya that paint you were looking for, it’s a dark blue color that almost matches that blue in your mane, right there, on the table.” well, guess I missed two helpful things from him, still need to work on that I see. I grabbed onto the rather small tube in my magic and stuffed it away as I walked out to try and find a way to spend my time till it became dusk. I went to an area where most ponies here didn’t seem to inhabit: the area where the majority of the odd path things were in the ground and looked inside some of the buildings here.

Now when I say there was a lot of terminals in these buildings, I mean I’ve tripled the number of terminals I’ve seen in my life in these next few hours with absolutely no valuable information in the ones I could get into, I understood the basics of breaking into these, but anything that would be hard left me confused. Most of these had information about these special days it held, strangely often, such as this strange event called “Trader Exchange”. Was the old world so privileged they didn’t have to trade constantly? How unfair.

One file of interest I found was about the first time the Goddess Twilight Sparkle was in charge, and almost had to sell one of the future ministry mares as a slave, maybe the old world wasn’t as good as I thought.

There were too many files in too many computers to be able to go through it all, and it was soon time for the show. I wasn’t sure what to expect to happen, except maybe a singer? Songs were just about the only thing I could think that a creature could make a job out of something like this, but the ticket didn’t show anything musical like.

The crowd was gathering in front of the tavern, slowly filling in one at a time. It seemed like they were using the larger room outside of the main room for this show, I ended up letting most the crowd go in before I followed suit, being one of the last ones inside. They even had a kind of strong-looking unicorn sitting beside the door, with a bunch of torn tickets sitting beside him. Well, that’s an easy job to do, how much does one get paid for that? Just like all the others before me, he closed the door in front of me until I handed him the makeshift ticket, and went inside.

Besides the seats built inside, they brought in makeshift things such as buckets and barrels for ponies to sit on, but luckily for me, there was a higher than the other barrels in the back that I took, sitting in the darkness of the room, seemingly far away from the ‘stage’ being used. There was a box in the very back with some sort of curtain over it, and a unicorn black in a coat with scars over his body leaning against it, and he was wearing the cape just like in the ticket, was he the showpony?

Glancing around while I waited for the last of the ponies to get seated, I noticed a few small boxes placed around the floor. They were small and dirty like the wood as if to blend in. I wanted to look at them more, but the unicorn at the front had his horn begin to glow and the room began to dim, except around him.

“Glad evening’s ponies and kirin, I am the one and only Grand Gladioso!” he boasted, standing up on two hooves. Around him the air shimmered, and a glowing mist faded in around him, spelling ‘Gladiso’ above him, the origin from one of those boxes in the room. He was trying at the very least. “Now some of you may not be aware of my legends..” his misty name began to swirl around him as he spoke, taking a different form above him. “Exterminator of Bloodwings, feller of a pack of putrid Ophiotaurus, and a slayer to even an Alicorn!” misty forms of each creature appeared above him, and he spun, a dagger flying through all three and spreading the mist away as if vanquishing them. His tale of greatness was honestly reaching me, I should ask him for tips!

“But none of these is my biggest achievement, you see. Many years ago, as a much more grand, Grand Gladioso found a beast so foul, so vicious, it threatened the whole world! Not only did I defeat it, but I also tamed it!” Wait... what did he just say? “Look and behold the mighty, evil, yet safe Pony of Shadows!” his horn flared, and the curtain over the towering box was yanked away and revealing a cage, with a dark mist in the form of a pony inside with only its angry eyes visible. The beast inside began to growl and move, as the darkness inside began to move wildly. The crowd, especially myself, let out a surprised gasp, and a few of us even backed up.

“Gah, calm yourself beast! I command it!” yelled the mighty Glandioso, as his horn began to flare… and I noticed something strange, the monsters green eyes closed, no squeezed shut, and revealed it’s red eyelids, with its body shrinking into itself as sparks grew from its neck, and it screamed in a strangely...pony way, to then fall limp to the cage floor. The crowd roared in stomps and cheers, besides for me. I alone was silent, staring in fear, not of the Pony of Shadows, but for.

The Pony of Shadows braced itself, and nopony noticed. They only cheered as the monster inside twitched slightly before the cover was put back over it, and Glad Gladioso continued his routine. I didn’t get to enjoy it, my mind was racing and this time for the better. That monster knew it was going to be shocked, it was sentient that much was clear… so why did It try to attack like that now? This didn’t make sense, none of this was making sense and this wasn’t something I could just let slide, because it seemed like the Pony of Shadows might need help.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

The show ended before I had time to think of a plan to talk to him, I had to do this carefully, the Pony of Shadows could be a true threat after all if I could just talk to him then… then I could figure this out. While the smiling ponies were leaving, I tried to talk to Gladioso after the show was over, but that pony that took my ticket got in front of me.

“Boss don’t do no signings, likes to be left alone after a show, so beat it.” darn, there goes my first plan. He stood ready in front of me, and even pressed a hoof to my shoulder and gave me a bit of a nudge.

“H-hey now… I just wanted to make sure you all got a room! There seem to be a lot of you here after all. And-” the big beefy unicorn, who I started to call Slug in my head due to his slow speech, cut me off.

“Har, we don’t get rooms! The boss roughs it with us, can’t take all his possessions into those places he says. Doubt he’d like to bunk with a wee gal like you!” he laughed the last bit out, and I in a flustered mess just turned and got out of there to prevent any further rude comments.

Once I had calmed down and mentally cursed at that vulgar pony, decided to stalk the tavern and wait to see where they would ‘rough it’. Not even twenty minutes later I saw them packing up, and loading their stuff onto either their brahmin, or its cart, including the large cage. I saw Starfury walk outside with Gladioso and give him a bag of bits, and Hightop came out and gave them what seemed like cooked dishes for the night. Food and bits for entertainment was their price, and he seemed happy with this and began to talk to the guards with him, and began to wander off.

Starfury and Hightop were talking together, and I noticed the spot in front of the tavern had a view of all the streets, perfect. I made my way up to them, more so to blend in and not stand out while I spied on the entertainer.

“Oh, Rushgal! Hello! Did you enjoy the show right? Free thirty bits for you, on the house” Starfury said with curiosity rising in his voice, he was really trying to make it up to me, wasn’t he? I hope I didn’t get found out talking to the Pony of Shadows, I’d hate to make his gift into a bad view in any way.

“Oh, Yes it was amazing, never seen one like it before! So, sparkly. Uh, Where are they going? It’s almost dark and they’re not staying here? Are they leaving?” I felt like I had to lie, I knew they weren’t leaving just yet, but I had to seem like I wasn’t following them. To my surprise, Hightop didn’t let the mayor talk and spoke for him.

“What, psshh naw. Girl, they declined the offer to stay in my lovely rooms in exchange for bits and food instead, the standard price for them is a free night and a meal, it’s a win-win for us all ain’t it?” not the question I wanted to be answered, gah!

“Okay, so where are they going then?” No other questions for you this time, Hightop!

“Go set up a tent somewhere on the outside of town, we suggested the prewar track field for them to use, we never use it and all that’s there are those computers that nopony likes. Nothin’ interesting on em anyways, don’t bother with them.

“Oh now Hightop..” began Starfury, and he began to talk about the town's history on those computers, perfect. I left as their debate sprung into action, good to know all mayors seem to love history as much as Dewdrop did.

The track field wasn’t far away, and as soon as I rounded the tavern I could see them putting down what seemed to be a tent and other things. This was perfect, I knew the path to them and from what I could see, the cage was being put upright against one of the buildings. Now I just need to do one thing before I can go talk to him: wait. Let them tire down and let it get darker. A few hours should do, so I returned to my room at the tavern (while avoiding the two ponies I knew here still talking about history) and bided my time, and drowning in anxiety.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

I forgot to buy bobby pins, gah why was there so much to keep track of? I think I almost woke up the shop pony with how late it was, I felt obligated to pay extra for these things, she seemed annoyed but I think that made it up to her... But now I was ready, set to go and talk to the pony of shadows.

They hadn’t moved, just set up their tents and a campfire with my goal frozen against the building, all but it’s tarp over it flapping silently in the dusty wind. I decided to take the long route around, get to the other side of the abandoned area, and slowly made my way forward. I was debating on crawling there or not and decided against it. Anypony sees me like that and it’d be way too obvious, crouched down I can go fast, and then maybe they won’t think twice at a glance.

Two buildings away, and I was starting to feel cold. I was acting like a thief and sneaking forward as if to steal from them, how a pony could do this and have this feeling of cold and dread, with adrenaline rising like this? I was starting to feel sick as well, and now with the ally between me and the building with the cage I froze, I could feel what felt like that giant frog crawling up my throat. Was it the fact I was acting like a petty thief, or that I was trying to talk to a creature who only wants to bathe the rest of Equestria in darkness? There was so little ‘light’ left in the wasteland, was I just scared? I’ve read those ancient books by the whole of the ministry, you can find those just about anywhere, and within the second book lies the pony of shadows and his tale. Those stories were common, even ponies in stables seemed to take a few copies of the prewar history with them. I always assumed none of them came back, were they all in similar situations, just as slaves?

Slow deep breath in… and out. Don’t overthink it, not this time, just pay attention to the now and go forward. The sight was clear with the guards just sitting next to their larger than needed fire, perfect, I could hear the crackling and popping from here. I gathered myself and walked forward, keeping myself low until I got to the cage and heard a soft whimper. Don’t stop now, don’t think about it, can’t stay in the open, I have to hurry here. I lifted the cool cover and brought myself under it, and was hit with a rancid odor and the exact opposite of what I expected.

A dirty, red unicorn was curled up in the furthest corner from me, shivering enough that I could hear his teeth from here and looked closer to a rabid dog than a pony… he was so far on one side to be close as close to the fire, I couldn’t help but think. Almost the ideal look for a slave, except for one thing: he had some muscles, regardless that his ribs were showing. I couldn’t see his cutie mark from here with how he was curled up. What I saw before me was not a monster, but a plea for help.

“Psst… Hey!” my voice, quiet to me, must have been eardrum-shattering to him due to how he darted his head up in pure shock, his deep green eyes - the same ones from the show, shrinking as he looked at me. “You hardly look the creature from the show… please just- hold on.” I kept repeating it in my head: Don’t stop and think, don’t stop and think. I stayed on my pure emotions, this pony was suffering I now knew for sure, and I wasn’t going to let it stand.

Bobby pin into the lock on the door, and screwdriver to the thin part of the key. It seems Gladioso didn’t seem too worried about security for the Pony of Shadows, this lock was simple. I felt the pin go further, pushing the mechanisms in place and made the lock click, and just like that the lock was off, and the Pony of Shadows was no longer in containment. His green eyes just stared at me in bewilderment, and I saw his body tense up.

“Quiet now… Get out of here, now.” I whispered as I pushed the door open to just a crack. He silently nodded and shakily stood up, revealing to me his body. Red coat with mangled what looked like a pink layer on the bottom, and black on the top mane and tail, a collar around his neck with a gem to his throat, and a cutie mark of two black circles that looked something like ghosts, or maybe just darkness waving? It was hard to tell in the darkness of the cave. I backed up as he slowly walked forward, shaking as much as a drunk mare on the weekend.

He was able to get down without an issue and stared down longingly at the dirt below him as if it were alien. As much as I would love to let him frolic in freedom, the longer he was here the more likely he’d be in danger with this...this slaver. Don’t think, just go right? Now he needed to learn it! I put myself behind him and gave him a gentle shove, swinging my tail into his leg. He seemed to get the idea because he just took off the way I came without looking back.

I did it, I freed somepony who was a slave! Who everypony thought was, or even is the Pony of Shadows. My excitement was short-lived because I let my thoughts in. ‘If everypony thinks he’s evil… won’t they see what you did as bad?’

...Oh, oh fuck I got to get out of here and run. Without a thought in my mind, I turned and began my rather extreme loop around the town towards the entrance, no pony stopped me because every pony was inside. No rude pony twins who laughed at people’s misfortune, no fire ponies, and no show pony slavers yelling at me. I was able to leave the town without looking suspicious, I thought and bolted to the west towards Crystal Town.

What did I just do? I saved a pony and probably ruined my reputation with rainbowless falls in one fell swoop! Did they know it was me? Would they think it odd I left as the Pony of Shadows escaped? Oh no, that was so obvious, they were going to hate me! I didn’t even get to talk to Blast and his group again!

“S...Stop! Please!” croaked a raspy voice, causing me to spin in fear of being caught, yet there was the red and black unicorn, staring at me and panting, slowing down once I turned to him. He paused and stared at me, tapping the ground and shifting his weight, he was looking for words. I didn’t interrupt and waited as the night continued as we stayed frozen. I thought about how flawed my plan was in the meantime, I didn’t have any plans for him once I saved him, just to let him wander the town until he was caught again? No escape plan was made on my end, I guess not thinking was a bad call. It didn’t take long before he finally spoke his single word. “Why..?”

I wasn’t honestly sure how to respond, so I simply shrugged. I didn’t have one specific reason for doing it, and while I was searching for my own words he soon continued.

“I don’t… I don’t get it! Nopony has helped me with that… that stallion. I’ve been the Pony of Shadows for the past ten years and-” it was my turn to cut him off, correcting him on the one wrong thing in his words.

“But you’re not, that’s clear. You can’t be a wild monster, I saw you brace for that horrible shock. I guess that to me it didn’t matter if you were the Pony of Shadows, you were suffering. Once I saw you without that fake mist around you, you were just another pony and… I didn’t think about it, I just helped you.”

“Just..just..?” he was trying to find his words, to say anything, but all that came from him were tears. He might have been free, but there was one issue with my actions that I intended to make right, so I walked over to him and placed my hoof on his shoulder.

“This might sound strange, but… Would you like to come with me? I’d hate to just leave you out here alone, and I would love some company. I got a few extra weapons that we can share, too.” he looked down to me, with my horn reaching up to his forehead. He didn’t say yes, and he didn’t say no.

He hugged me, and let his sobs lessen to just a sniffle. I rested my hoof on his back to let him know it was okay, he has somepony now.

“I don’t... Even know your name..” he croaked out, and realized he might have hurt his throat from the yell before, and then forcing himself to scream for me.

“Dreamrush” I began, as I fetched out some water and held it out for him. “Now drink slowly, doctor’s order, you look malnourished, Mr…?”

“B-Black...Cherry...” he stuttered, eyeing the water as a raider would to a stable full of food and guns… and tied up ponies for them. I made him slowly drink up, letting him recover himself. I may be weak in general and while he looked stronger than me, he had no energy to keep him going.

“Well, Black Cherry… Would it be okay if I called you BC? As a nice little nickname?” he nodded, guzzling down more of my water. ...No, our water. He was my brand new partner, and I was for sure going to make sure he’d be able to stand without me. More importantly, however, was that he was my brand new friend.

“I...I...” he gulped out while drinking the rest of that water. “Y-yes, yes I mean..” his answer made me smile from ear to ear.

While we spent just a few more moments in rest, I could see him clearly. Red coat yes, with a more… The magenta bottom half of his mane, and so dark it was almost black kind of purple on top. Yet I was wrong on his cutie mark, it wasn’t two ghosts or shadows or souls at all, there was a line in the shape of a V connecting the two, and it was a symbol I’ve seen before.

A Black Cherry with a ghostly aura.

_{Footnote: Level up.

Skills note: Firearms has reached level 25
Medicine has reached level 50

Perk gained: Lil’ Doc (Level 1). For every level of this perk, gain 25% more effectiveness with medical items for you and companions.}

Fallout Equestria: Broken Dreams

by BattedPants

Chapter 1: In Our Town

Chapter 2: First Fight, First Flight.

Chapter 3: Black Cherry